young blood
by alanabloom
Summary: "Piper Chapman is nine years when she first sees Alex Vause." A childhood/middle school/high school AU for Alex and Piper. Incorporates their flashbacks from the series. Emphasis on the high school era. Two shot.
1. Chapter 1

Piper Chapman is nine years old when she first sees Alex Vause.

She's new to their school, and Mrs. Patterson makes her do that horrible thing where she stands in front of the class and introduces herself. Jessica Wedge and her three best friends are giggling quietly in an unmistakable _laughing __at__ her_ sort of way, and they're not even trying very hard to hide it. Piper's glad she's never had to be the new kid. Being the "always just kinda been here" kid is hard enough.

Alex Vause looks relieved when she finally gets to take the classroom's only empty desk, which is unfortunately right in front of Jessica and her friends. As she pulls off her puffy blue jacket, Piper can pretty much guess what they're laughing about. The new girl's clothes are kind of old and, while not exactly dirty, kind of dingy and moth eaten. They're oddly mismatched, too, not only in style but in size: the girl's jeans are too big, while her sweater is too small - the sleeves stop several inches above her wrists. And she smells faintly like the church thrift store Piper sometimes goes with her mother to drop off clothes she's outgrown.

Jessica's obviously noticed that, too, because she presses the balls of her feet against the back of Alex's chair to push her desk forward several inches. Alex turns around, startled by the movement, to see Jessica pinching the bridge of her nose between two fingers, waving her free hand back in forth in front of it. "_Pe__www_," she hisses, loud enough for at least two rows of desks to hear._  
_

It's completely over the top. Thrift stores don't smell _bad_. Just kind of old and dusty.

Piper looks over at her friend Sarah, in the desk beside her, but Sarah's watching the whole exchange with interest. Piper sighs and faces front again. Sarah gets way too excited any time Jessica finds someone to pick on, as if the more people _below_ them on Jessica's list, the better.

Piper actually used to be friends with Jessica, and Holly and Madison and Amy...their moms all know each other, and they volunteer at the school together. But in third grade when they started having real math homework, Jessica would constantly ask Piper if she could copy hers. Piper always said no, so now Jessica barely talks to her except to call her Reader Dweeb or Goody Two Shoes.

Piper at nine is a rule follower. She gets 100s on all her spelling and Accelerated Reader tests, and she always remembers her homework. Piper at nine is quiet and unassuming, happy with one or two good friends...even when her friends seem to have higher aspirations. Piper at nine does not like to shake things up.

So when she sees the new girl sitting alone at the corner of a table at lunch, she doesn't invite her over, even though she kind of wants to. Jessica Wedge will bully no matter what; Piper would rather not attract her attention, not place herself right next to Jessica's target.

After school, Piper and Sarah are waiting for the bus, and Alex Vause is walking toward the same stop, when suddenly Jessica yells out, "Hey, Pigsty!"

Understandably, Alex doesn't turn for this name, but almost everyone else does, so there's a crowd watching when Jessica skips over to Alex and thrusts a bulky black garbage bag under her nose. "Can you take this home with you?" Alex looks at her blankly, and Jessica adds, "You do live at a garbage dump, right?"

The laughter starts with Jessica but scatters quickly and unpleasantly through the crowd. Piper can hear Sarah joining in beside her. She watches Alex Vause drop the garbage bag like she's been burned. It sags open and spills its contents on the concrete, and Alex's eyes have barely widened in panic before Jessica raises her voice, barely containing her delight at this unexpected twist to her plan. "Mr. Reilly, this girl just threw a bunch of garbage!"

The PE teacher on bus duty jogs over to them, and Piper's chest tightens in sympathy as he glares sternly down at Alex and the mess at her feet. She could walk over, tell Mr. Reilly what happened, but before she can decide the bus' door slides open, and another teacher on duty ushers them inside.

Everyone has taken their seats, the doors have closed, and the bus has pulled into the line of other buses, idling as it waits its turn to pull out of the parking lot, when there's a knock on the closed door. It squeaks open, and up font, Mr. Reilly says something to the bus driver, and a few seconds later Alex steps onto the bus, shuffling down the aisle, eyes darting wildly for any open seat.

"Nice going, Pigsty," Sarah whispers when she passes, and Piper wants to tell her that none of Jessica's friends are even here to _hear her _right now, but she doesn't say anything.

A few moments after Alex passes, Piper twists around in her seat. Alex is sitting alone, two seats back and across the aisle, and she's hugging her backpack to her chest. Her eyes look huge and bright behind her glasses, and she's blinking a lot, her top teeth dug stubbornly into her trembling lower lip. She looks almost unbearably sad and lonely, and there's a seat right beside her, but Piper doesn't go talk to her.

Piper at nine is kind of a coward.

* * *

For the next few months of fourth grade, the status quo stays that way.

Alex Vause remains Jessica's favorite target, and it's hard to deny that, with her around, Piper gets a few less "Reader Dweebs" and "Goody Goodys." It's kind of gross watching Sarah or even Alison Barnes try to join in on it - Sarah's the one who delightfully reports to Jessica that Alex's mom was her waitress at Friendly's one night - but Piper knows enough to take what she can get.

But Piper always watches.

Alex doesn't just clam up and slink away. She talks back. Even though her efforts are always in vain and often just make things worse (_my mom has like four jobs_), she still argues. And after that first day, she never once looks close to crying.

Alex at nine is all prickly defenses and a child's version of righteous anger. She develops a constantly bored exterior, a habit of rolling her eyes as though Jessica is only bothering her in that she's such a _waste of time_. It's almost definitely an act, because Alex at nine is all self-preservation, but Piper can't help but admire it. Alex at nine is brave.

* * *

And Alex is the one to talk to her, in the end.

Piper's too rattled to go through with Sarah's "sneak into the R rated movie" plan, and Sarah sighs and says Piper was was just looking for an excuse...as if the most important thing about seeing her _dad_ with a woman who is decidedly _not_ her mom was that now Piper didn't have to break a rule. Sarah goes to the movie anyway.

Piper sits on a bench outside, her knees pulled up to her chest, feeling upset and scared and too young to know how to handle this.

"Hey, you. Piper."

She looks up to see Alex Vause walking toward her, wearing the same clothes she wore to school yesterday. She's eating an ice cream cone from Ben and Jerry's, even though it's almost winter. "You're in my class."

"Um. Yeah. Hi."

"What are you doing here?"

"I was, um, going to the movies." For some reason, an instinctual need to impress Alex rears its head. "We got tickets for an R-rated movie. To sneak in."

Alex doesn't ask who _we_ is. Alex just laughs at her. "Bullshit." Piper starts a little at the ease of the curse word rolling over Alex's lips. "_You're_ going to sneak into an R-rated movie?"

Piper can't think of what to say to this; she's too surprised Alex knows anything about her.

"When's the movie?" Alex asks finally. Her strawberry ice cream is melting onto her gloves.

"It already started."

Alex grins a little. "See? You couldn't go through with it."

"_No_, it's just..."

And for some reason, Piper tells Alex Vause everything. About her dad, and the woman who isn't her mother.

Alex gets a very serious look on her face while Piper's talking, and she doesn't once interrupt. When Piper finishes talking, Alex takes a deep breath and says solemnly, "What an asshole."

This time Piper's not sure if it's the cursing that startles her, or the fact that it's being applied to her father.

"Are you going to tell your mom?"

Of course, that's the question pulsing in Piper's brain right now. "I don't know," she says, looking up at Alex in a way that clearly invites her input.

"I'd probably want to know if it was me," Alex says thoughtfully. "And I know _my_ mom would want to know. One of her boyfriends cheated on her once, and she told him if he ever came back she'd cut his balls off." Piper frowns, disturbed. Then Alex adds, "Plus, do you really want to just walk around keeping a huge secret from your mom _forever?" _

"No." That Piper can answer easily. "You're probably right. I gotta tell her."

They're quiet for awhile. Alex gives up on her mostly melted ice cream cone and tosses it in a nearby bush, then rips off her gloves. Eventually, she asks, "You're on my bus, right?"

"Yeah. I mean, I think so." Stupid. Like she doesn't know everyone who's on the bus.

Alex doesn't quite meet her eye when she says, her voice carefully casual, "You could come sit Monday morning. Tell me how it goes."

"Okay. Maybe."

Nodding, Alex doesn't push it further. "Cool." After a beat, she says, "I gotta go. My mom gets off work soon. Sorry about your dad."

"Yeah, thanks."

Then Piper watches as Alex trots back toward the Ben and Jerry's.

* * *

Monday morning, she's anxious at the bus stop.

Sarah will be saving her a seat, as usual. And Alex Vause will be sitting alone. As usual.

Piper's much more comfortable with _as usual_.

But she does want to tell someone about her mother's weirdo reaction, the injustice of _Piper_ getting punished, and the fact that she still feels like she's carrying around a secret.

She still hasn't decided what she's going to do when she gets on the bus, which probably increases the likelihood that she'll just play it safe and slip into her _as usual:_ sit down beside Sarah, and pretend like she never talked to Alex Vause about parental infidelity.

But then she sees Alex, watching her carefully. She gives a small, close lipped smile when Piper looks at her. Alex's eyes are a question covering up barely concealed hope.

And Piper thinks of her mom, ignoring troubling information, and she thinks of herself, ignoring uncomfortable situations. She doesn't want to do that anymore.

So she strides down the aisle, slides into the seat beside Alex Vause, and says, as if they were in the middle of a conversation, "She didn't even _care_."

Just like that, they're friends.

* * *

They're ten years old before Piper goes to Alex's house.

After months of having Alex over after school, or for sleepovers, Piper's mother starts dropping hints that she thinks the lack of reciprocity is rude.

_Why aren't you ever invited to her house, Piper?_

So to placate her mother, that week at school, when Alex drops into a conversation, "Wanna do a sleepover Friday?," Piper casually asks if they can do it Alex's house this time.

Alex goes quiet for a long moment, adjusting her glasses needlessly on her face, and eventually mutters that she'll ask her mom. The next morning on the bus, Alex reports that her mom gave permission, but she doesn't seem very happy about it.

That Friday, Alex is uncharacteristically quiet on the bus ride home, her eyes narrowed and lips pursed in a deep frown, like she's in the midst of the task that's costing her great effort and no pleasure.

Piper's too dense to figure out the problem, even when they get off the bus on a street lined with dingy apartment buildings and Alex starts glancing back at her every few seconds. There's an oddly intense expression on Alex's face that makes Piper not want to talk, like anything she says is going to be taken very seriously, so she follows silently until they come to a two story, motel style apartment building, a row of doors that open directly outside. Alex leads the way up the white metal stairs, to a door with stripped paint and the silver number 6 dangling from its center, then fishes a key out of her backpack.

The key provokes Piper's first flicker of surprise. "Where's your mom?"

"Work." Even that single syllable is barbed and defensive, but Piper's too busy worrying that her parents will find out she was without adult supervision to register any other implications. Alex doesn't look at her as she sticks the key in the lock and opens the door.

The apartment is small, smaller than Piper could have imagined. The main room is encompassed of a recliner and a couch, which is piled with pillows and sheets as though someone's been sleeping there, an ancient TV, and a huge shelf packed with records. The carpet changes seamlessly to a small patch of tile, just big enough for a stove, fridge, and a sink. Piper can see a bathroom set off from the main room, next to a closed door that might be a bedroom, but that's the extent of the place.

"So...yeah." Alex's arms are folded across her chest, and she's watching Piper closely, eyes suddenly empty of all aggression. Now she just looks nervous, like she can't help but see the apartment - see her whole life, really - through Piper's eyes.

Piper's not sure if she's meant to say something. For a second, she can hear her mother's voice in her head, that fake voice she puts on when she talks to company, complimenting her friend's new hairstyle when she was just insulting it to Piper before they walked in the door.

Instead, Piper tosses her backpack aside and looks at Alex expectantly. "So. What do you want to do?"

Alex squints at Piper discerningly, but slowly her expression relaxes. "You want to hear something?"

Piper nods, so they move into the bedroom, which turns out to be Alex's. It's small, with an unmade twin bed and stacks of books taking up practically all the floor space, but the walls are plastered with band posters and the light is brighter than the rest of the apartment.

"You can sit on the bed," Alex tells her as she walks to a tape deck sitting on the floor in the corner. Piper flips the red comforter across the rumpled sheets before sitting gingerly on the edge, and watches as Alex kneels down and presses a button on the cassette player.

Wailing rock music fills the room and Alex grins a little as she flops onto the bed beside Piper, tugging on her arm and upending her prim perch off the edge. They stretch out on the narrow mattress, eyes turned toward the water stained ceiling that's freckled with glow in the dark stars, the music thrumming over their ribs.

Piper's not sure if there's a point to listening to this music - the sort of hard, screaming songs her parents always turn past on the radio - but she's afraid asking would seem stupid, so she just keeps quiet, even when she can feel Alex glancing over at her, trying to gauge a reaction.

When three songs have past, Piper ventures cautiously, "It's good."

Alex's grin is instantaneous. "I know." She's quiet for a few seconds, then adds, "It's my dad."

Lifting herself up on her elbows, Piper stares down at Alex in surprise. "What, he's singing?"

"No, he's the drummer. Hold on..." Alex vaults off the bed and bends over the tape deck again. There's the high pitched squealing of the tape fast forwarding, and then Alex stops with practiced precision on a pounding drum solo. She straightens up but doesn't return to the bed, just stands there bouncing on the balls of her feet, eagerly watching Piper listen to the music.

Dumbly, Piper bobs her head in time to the rhythm. "Wow."

"His band's really famous. See?" Alex points at the biggest poster on the wall, skulls and fire in the background of four tattooed, leather wearing band members, the name "Death Maiden" in red, severe letters. Piper surveys the walls a little closer; at least a third of the posters are for the same band.

"That's _so_ cool," Piper says at last. She's not sure if it is; she's not sure what to make of it, really. She knows nothing about fathers who are rock stars, fathers on posters all over the walls but never mentioned as part of Alex's day to day life. And she knows nothing about tiny cheap apartments, even though famous people are supposed to be rich. "Like, really, really cool."

It's the right thing to say, though, and Alex opens her smile up completely, beaming with pride. She gives a modest shrug. "Yeah. I know." Satisfied, Alex turns down the volume but leaves the tape playing, then starts to rummage under her bed for board games. "You wanna play a game or something?"

So they stretch across Alex's twin bed and play _Guess Who_ and _Clue_ for the next few hours, until they hear the front door of the apartment open, and a few seconds later, a woman appears in the doorway of Alex's room. "Hiya, baby."

Alex doesn't look up from the game board. "Hey, Mom."

"And you must be Piper. Good to finally meet ya."

"Nice to meet you, Ms. Vause," Piper says in her polite voice. Her mother's voice.

"Please, it's Diane."

Alex's mom is young and pretty. She's wearing a lot of makeup and a black collared shirt with a name tag on it. "Brought you guys some food from the restaurant. You like cheeseburgers, Piper?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Ooh, you're a polite one. Maybe you could teach Al a thing or two."

Alex smirks. "Why? _Y__ou_ haven't."

"Don't talk back." But Alex's mom is grinning, and she doesn't comment on the messy floor, just steps over piles of books and cassette tapes to start rummaging in Alex's closet.

"It's your move," Alex prompts impatiently, attention still on the game, but Piper is half distracted as starts thumbing through hangers containing her clothes. Right in front of them, she pulls off her black polo and swaps it for a plain white shirt, then pulls on a blue Wal-Mart vest. "How was school?"

Piper's mom asks her that every day, and every day Piper says _fine_, and the discussion closes. Alex, though, launches into an example of Mrs. Patterson's blatant hypocrisy and favoritism, letting Jessica Wedge get away with passing notes in class, and Alex's mom scoffs sympathetically, insults Jessica Wedge, and refers to Mrs. Patterson as a _bitch_ (Piper barely stifles her gasp at that one). She asks Piper to corroborate the story, and requests confirmation that Jessica is as much of a "little fuckin' snot" as Alex makes her sound. Piper vehemently agrees with the assessment.

Eventually, looks at her watch, mutters _fuck_ under her breath, and says she has to go. "The food's in the kitchen, you may need to heat it up a little. I'll be back close to two...Alex, let Piper have the bed, yeah? 'Less you girls wanna make some sort of blanket fort. Go nuts."

She kisses the top of Alex's head, waves at Piper, and then she's gone again. Piper is definitely not supposed to be without adult supervision so late, and she can only fervently hope that her mom doesn't call to check up on her.

They grab Cokes from the fridge, microwave cheeseburgers and french fries, and eat in front of the old TV in the living room. Alex wants to prank call Jessica or Holly or Madison, but Piper repeatedly refuses until she finally gives up on the idea. There are only a few channels on the TV, and when nothing remotely interesting is on anymore, Alex puts on one of her mother's old records, not her dad's band this time, and, hopped up on soda, the two of them dance and air guitar around the living room until they're sweating and breathless. They sit on the couch and play cards for awhile: Slap Jack and Speed and Crazy Eights. Alex tries to teach Piper poker, but her grasp on the game is far too tenuous to make her a good instructor, so eventually they give up the cards and flip through the TV again. Alex settles on some slasher movie that Piper almost definitely wouldn't be allowed to watch at home - even the edited for television version - and they watch until they fall asleep with their heads on opposite ends the couch, feet tangled in the middle.

After a few hours, Piper wakes up with a jolt of the buzzing adrenaline that comes from sleeping in an unfamiliar place. It takes her a moment to remember where she is, and a moment after that to register that something woke her up: the front door, opening and closing with Alex's mom's return. Piper immediately squeezes her eyes shut, listening to Ms. Vause's soft footsteps across the living room, the opening and shutting of the refrigerator door and, for a few minutes, quiet chewing.

Eventually, Piper feels a blanket being draped over her, pulled tight so it can cover Alex, too. The footsteps retreat again. Alex's bedroom door clicks shut. And Piper goes back to sleep.

There is a box of half a dozen doughnuts waiting for them on the tiny kitchen counter the next morning, and Piper and Alex have each had two before Ms. Vause emerges, yesterday's make up smeared beneath her eyes, her legs bare under an oversized Led Zeppelin T-shirt. She snatches a doughnut and a Diet Coke and sits on the floor in front of the couch, asking them about their night and telling stories about the _dumbass _customers at Wal-Mart.

When Piper's mother comes to pick her up - not getting out the car, which neither Piper or Alex quite hide their relief over - Ms. Vause tells Piper she's welcome back anytime. On the other hand, _her_ mother is staring at the apartment building with poorly concealed distaste, and says right away that she never meant to suggest they couldn't have all their sleepovers at the Chapman household.

But there are more sleepovers at Alex's, and they go pretty much the same as that first one, except most of the time Piper and Alex share Alex's bed instead of sleeping on the couch. It takes several months before Alex is fully relaxed about Piper coming over, but Piper likes the Vause apartment. She likes the take out from Friendly's, and she likes Alex's mom's records (though, and she'd never say this to Alex, she likes a lot of the bands more than her father's), and she likes - _Diane_. She's not there much, but when she is, she talks to Piper and Alex like they're her friends who have gotten together for a gossip session. She complains about coworkers and customers and bosses, and listens to them complain about teachers and students.

Piper's mother disapproves as hard as she can without actually saying the words, but she doesn't outright forbid Piper from going to Alex's...simply makes sure the "playdates" are at their own house just as frequently. Mrs. Chapman isn't exactly _rude_ to Alex, but her politeness takes on a certain frostiness after the _one time_ Alex slips up and says "shit" in front of her. After that, Piper's mom asks a little too often if she'd like to invite Alison or Sarah H. over again, and Piper doesn't bother explaining that she isn't really friends with them anymore, and she doesn't miss it. They're too obsessed with what Jessica and Ryan and all their cronies think, and Piper no longer has any interest in anyone who's _ever_ referred to Alex as Pigsty.

* * *

They're eleven when the fifth grade goes on its class trip to Washington DC: four days, including two days missed of school, and it's a source of building excitement pretty much the whole year. It's their first overnight field trip, their first time to be in a hotel room without adults.

On the day the teachers finally pass out information packets about the trip, everyone goes crazy, talking about who's going to room together and how much junk food they're going to bring on the bus. Piper's eyes sweep the classroom in trepidation, and she leans over to Alex and whispers, "Guess this means we have to find the two people we'd least wanna kill after four days in a hotel room."

Alex is frowning down at the paper, and she doesn't look up at Piper when she says, "Three."

"What?"

"You'll have to find _three_ people to stay with, 'cause I'm not going."

"What? Shut up, yes you are."

"I already have to see these losers enough every day at school. Why would I want to go on a fucking _trip_ with them?" Alex ignores Piper's paranoid hiss of her name at the curse word and barrels forward, "That's 24 hours a day for four days. No thanks."

"It's not twenty-four hours," Piper corrects, her voice unmistakably bratty. "You'll sleep for at least eight."

"That's still twice as much as my idea of fun."_  
_

Piper clenches her jaw, upset. They've been talking about this trip all year, and all of sudden Alex doesn't care? She opens her mouth to point this out, when she catches Alex staring moodily down at the packet, and Piper figures out what page she's looking at. The one that lists the total cost: the hotel, the meals, the bus fee.

_Oh_.

Piper shuts her mouth. She stares down at her own packet, at the itinerary: monuments and museums during the day, some fun activity like bowling or roller skating at night. She's been looking forward to this _all year_.

But then she tries to imagine the trip without Alex. Pictures herself trailing after Sarah, who's trailing after Jessica and Holly and those other _snotty little bitches_. Imagines watching Chloe embarrass herself trying to flirt with Ryan. Imagines getting made fun of her for reading on the bus, or being ignored at every single museum or monument or meal. Imagines roller skating by herself while everyone else whizzes by in groups.

"You're probably right, actually," Piper says at last, closing the brochure. "Did you see all the stupid stuff they're doing? Like I really want to watch try to bowl." Alex slides a suspicious gaze sideways at her, but doesn't say anything. Piper continues, "And museums are so boring. There are like ten different museums, did you see?"

Slowly, Alex unfurls a grin. "The only thing I'd be sad to miss is any of these idiots falling on their ass trying to skate."

"Especially Jessica."

"Oh, but she's probably perfect at skating. Her mom probably paid for private lessons."

"You think she'd have time? I don't know if you know this, but she takes horseback riding, and gymnastics -"

"- and modern dance -"

"- and art classes - "

"- and smiling lessons - "

"- and modern hair braiding -"

"- and harmonica instruction -"

"-and training bra decoration-"

Alex lets out a bark of a laugh at that one, and their recurring joke about Jessica's overly scheduled life comes to an end. Piper grins in satisfaction; she almost never ends the game, and anyway she gets immense satisfaction from cracking Alex up.

On the days the rest of the class is in Washington DC, there are six kids in the classroom, and the substitute just lets them watch movies all day (not educational movies either), and she doesn't even seem to care when they play cards or read magazines across their desks. Piper doesn't regret the decision.

* * *

The week before they start middle school, Piper and Alex, who's clad in shorts and a thin tank top, stand in the Vause apartment's bathroom carefully reading instructions on a box of black hair dye.

Alex leans her head over the sink while Piper, plastic gloves over her hands, meticulously covers every strand of Alex's hair. "Sure you don't want some?" Alex asks, her voice strained from being upside down.

"Yeah, right."

"I don't mean black. You should do like a red streak. That'd look badass."

"My parents would kill me."

"Your catchphrase," Alex says with a dramatic sigh. Piper, at twelve, does not change.

She ignores Alex, stilling her hands to survey her work. "I think I got everywhere."

"You _think_?"

"I definitely, for sure got everywhere."

Fifteen minutes later, Piper stands nearby as Alex leans just her head under the shower nozzle, inky black water draining into the sink. She can already tell her hair is going to look awesome.

Alex at twelve is at least three inches taller than any boy in their grade, which for awhile had allowed the nickname Big Foot to replace Pigsty. But soon she was wearing a real bra when the rest of the girls are barely figuring out the trainees, and boys have started staring.

So Alex enters junior high with black hair and black nails, and she's started wearing her mother's old band T-shirts with the sleeves cut off. She takes the jeans her mom gets her at Goodwill and deliberately widens the small holes worn into the denim. Most girls still dislike her - the new trend of boy staring doesn't help - but there's intimidation now, and no one dares make fun of Alex to her face.

Piper, in her Gap overalls and french braid, sometimes feels impossibly young next to Alex, and there's no way for her to catch up. She goes home one weekend from Alex's place with black fingernails, and her mother physically shudders at the sight. "Piper, take that off this instant. Are you trying to be..._gothic_ now?"

For the first several months of middle school, Pipers feels like Alex's much younger, _much_ less cool sidekick, simply looking on admiringly while Alex snarks at any boy who comes near her.

So when Cody Lionel kisses her outside the band room on their way to the car lot after school, Piper is full to bursting with a childish sense of pride, floating more on the fact the kiss happened than the kiss itself, and she runs right to her bedroom to call Alex, whose bus should have dropped her off by now.

"Guess what?"

"Not even a hello?"

"No time. Guess _what_?"

"Well, I saw you like twenty minutes ago and you weren't bursting with news then. Sooo I'm gonna guess a water main exploded and killed everyone left at school but you? I hope?"

"Uh, _dark_. And no."

"Well, I went straight to mass destruction, so I'm out of guesses. _What_?"

"Cody Lionel kissed me," Piper declares, practically gleeful.

The other end of the phone is disappointingly silent.

"Outside the band room," Piper adds.

There's another pause, and then Alex says, "Sorry, is that meant to be a good thing?"

Disappointment is starting to trickle down Piper's spine. "Um, _yes_?"

"Okay." It's the tone Alex uses when she thinks someone's said something extremely stupid or shallow, and Piper can feel herself getting pissed off. Aren't best friends supposed to squeal and be excited for you when you get your first kiss? _Geez_.

"Cody's cute," she insists defensively.

"Cody's _gross_. Wasn't he snapping girls' bra straps like two months ago?"

"That was at least a _year_ ago."

"Oh, my mistake." There's real bitterness in Alex's voice now. It's a tone Piper's heard a lot, but never directed at _her_. It makes her stomach clamp up. "He still stares at my boobs, like, all the time."

Piper clenches her teeth. "Is that it? Are you _jealous_?"

There's a long, heavy silence, during which Piper recklessly unravels her own line of thinking, making herself angrier. _Every_ guy stares at Alex, _every_ guy flirts with Alex constantly, and she acts like she doesn't care, like she doesn't even like it...and yet now she can't handle anyone else getting attention? How the hell does that work?

Piper's about to launch into this whole tirade when Alex's heated voice cleaves through the silence, "_Fuck_ you, Piper."

The line goes dead, and Piper's anger dies just as quickly. She stands frozen, listening to dead air followed by dial tone, panic breathing down the back of her neck like a monster.

She calls back twice, but Alex doesn't answer. And she isn't waiting by Piper's locker the next morning, doesn't look at her in the two classes they have together, and doesn't even seem to show up in the cafeteria for lunch. Cody Lionel passes Piper a note asking if she's going to the home basketball game that Friday, and all she can think of is Alex making fun of all extracurricular activities. By the end of the day, Piper's teetering precariously on the edge of tears; a single day of not talking to Alex is miserable, no matter how many notes from sort of cute boys she gets.

As soon as the last bell of the day rings, Piper ricochets out of her desk to get to Alex's locker before she does. She's pacing in front of it when Alex appears around the corner. Even from the distance, Piper can see her sigh and roll her eyes.

"I'm sorry," Piper blurts out as soon as Alex is in earshot, not wanting to give her a chance to say something snarky. "I'm really sorry, okay?" Never mind that she isn't entirely sure what she's supposed to have done. Piper just hates when people are mad at her, and though this is the first time it's happened, she can already tell _Alex_ being mad at her is the worst.

Alex sighs and starts spinning her lock without answering. Finally, the locker door swings open, partially obscuring Alex's face, and she says reluctantly, her voice echoing in the locker, "Yeah, I'm sorry, too."

Instantly, Piper's whole body feels looser. "I don't even like Cody. I don't think I do, anyway. I just liked that he wanted to kiss me."

Still speaking to the inside of her locker, Alex replies, "I could have told you he wanted to kiss you. It's obvious."

Piper leans against the locker next to Alex, momentarily glad she isn't looking over. "I just wanted to feel like I'm cool. Like you are."

Alex goes still, and after a moment she leans around her locker door. Grinning. "Pipes. I'm _not_ gonna be the kind of cool that comes from making out with boys. But you kiss whoever you want. I'll stop being a bitch about it."

Piper's not entirely sure what she means, but she's so busy basking in the familiarity of Alex's smile, the warm relief of the end of a fight, that she doesn't think much about it.

* * *

At fourteen, they go see _Reality Bites_ and Alex talks incessantly about how pretty Winona Ryder is, and only then does Piper start to figure out what it meant.

She thinks.

Maybe.

It doesn't change anything, just goes a long way toward explaining why Piper's had a few different boyfriends (middle school boyfriends, boyfriends who hold her hand on the car lot and pass notes in the hallway and occasionally call her house to have twenty minute phone calls full of awkward pauses) and Alex hasn't. They still spend the night at each other's homes at least once a weekend, and hang out with only each other more often than not.

Alex at fourteen wears dark eye makeup and thrift store grunge flannel over cut up band T-shirts. She listens to bands that started before any of them were born, and smokes cigarettes that the man who works at the 7-Eleven across from the middle school sells her without ID. She has trouble with authority, and most of the teachers don't like her much even though she gets better grades than she has any right to get considering how little she studies.

Piper at fourteen gets straight A's and never lets even Alex copy her homework. She plays tennis and joins student counsel because her parents insist she start being well rounded even before high school. She develops some in-school friendships with other girls on the tennis team and other kids in the high math class, but she always defaults to Alex, who gets unending enjoyment from stomping up to Piper in front of other people, talking a mile a minute and cursing like a sailor until everyone else slinks away.

There's been a trend of birthday parties that are actually mini-dances, held invariably in the Women's Club with rented DJs and disco lights. Piper starts getting invited, and it pleases her mother to no end. If she has a boyfriend at the time she goes, and they hold hands in a circle with other couples, and eventually make out during the slow dances. If she's not "going" with anyone when a birthday dance comes around, Piper usually skips them and hangs out with Alex, who's never invited.

Piper likes the boyfriends and her tennis friends and her honors math friends well enough, but they all seem dull eyed and boring compared to Alex. _Piper_ feels dull eyed and boring compared to Alex. Alex at fourteen is already a force of nature, she is sparks and flames and _something _that makes people pay attention. Piper has gotten used to walking through the mall or down the street and feeling eyes on them. She's gotten used to the way cashiers and waiters talk to Alex like she's older than she is. The Alex Vause Piper first met, the one who spent every second painfully aware of what she _didn't_ have, has transformed into someone who doesn't give a fuck about the _right_ clothes or the _right_ music or the _right_ friends.

Alex at fourteen carries a black backpack with ironed on decals of her father's band like they're badges of her own cool. Alex's _cool_ isn't the same as the other eighth graders. It's not the cool that means _popular_, the social pyramid topped with jocks and cheerleaders. Alex's cool is harder and edgier. It's a cool the others aren't mature enough to understand yet.

Piper understands it, even though she doesn't have it in her. She simply basks in the glow of it, lapping it up by association. She's got mix tapes full of Alex's mother's music, and most mornings before class Alex drags her into the bathroom and does her eye makeup. Piper at fourteen is a straight A student, beloved by teachers, bookish but pretty enough not to be held back by it. In other words, she is decidedly average...save for her friendship with Alex. They are best friends, and that doesn't make sense with the rest of Piper's reputation. It's her one bit of enigma, and she's proud of it.

* * *

The summer before ninth grade, they're stretched out on the roof of Alex's apartment complex at nearly midnight, stargazing (Piper) and smoking (Alex).

"I told my mom," Alex says suddenly, apropos of nothing, unless what she told her mother coincidentally had something to do with the mythology of Orion, which Piper has just finished explaining (not that Alex had asked).

"Told her what?"

"About the whole...liking only girls deal."

Piper's quiet for a moment, watching curls of smoke float in front of the star filled sky. She doesn't bother to mention that Alex hadn't really officially told _her_ about the whole "liking only girls deal". She just prompts, "And what'd she say?"

"She said she was jealous, and that I was lucky, because all men are assholes. And then she thought for a second and said, _actually, women can be pretty batshit crazy too._ Then she hugged me and she said she was sorry, but I was pretty much fucked either way."

Piper's laugh is loud and genuine. "Sounds about right."

"Yeah."

Piper keeps her eyes turned skyward, but she knows Alex is looking at her, gauging her. She knows the weight of Alex's expectant gaze well. This always happens with them; Alex doesn't care what most people think, anymore, doesn't give a shit about most reactions, but she gives a shit about Piper's. She hasn't outgrown that, and it makes Piper's chest feel warm with pride.

She shuffles the slightest bit closer to Alex, so their shoulders are touching, a comforting pressure, but she keeps her expression decidedly unperturbed, like this conversation is just any other conversation. She can't think of exactly what to say, and ends up blurting out, "Can I have a cigarette?"

Alex lets out a shocked, spluttering laugh. "Serious?"

"_Yes_."

"I thought the second a cigarette touches your lips it summons your father?"

"Shut up."

"I thought if a single wisp of smoke hits your delicate lungs you develop instant disease?"

"Shut _up_."

Alex sits up so she can light a cigarette for Piper, but she's still chuckling endlessly at her own stupid jokes, and Piper scowls up at her.

"You know," Piper says at last with great dignity. "It's ironic that you don't like dick. Since you are one."

Alex starts laughing so hard she drops the lit cigarette on their blanket, and doesn't even hear Piper's instinctual yelp. "That," she chokes out eventually, "is the funniest fucking joke...you've ever made."

"I'm very amusing," Piper says haughtily. She props the rescued cigarette between her lips but doesn't inhale.

"You are," Alex agrees. "But it's usually not intentional."

That earns her the back of Piper's hand against her stomach.

When they eventually make their way downstairs and into the building, Diane is asleep on the couch, so they tiptoe into Alex's bedroom, and for the first time Alex looks uncertain. "I can make a pallet on the floor..."

Shooting her a sarcastic look, Piper snaps, "Why? Feeling the need for some variety after the last two hundred or so sleepovers? Worried we're in a rut?"

Alex's face relaxes, and she flops onto her bed in an undignified manner. "Maybe I'm just sick of you stealing the fucking covers."

"_Dick_."

"Ew."

They take turns in the bathroom and squeeze into the bed like they've done two hundred or so times before. Alex leaves her glasses on the bedside table and grabs her walkman instead. Obediently, Piper slides her head as far from Alex's as she can, as Alex sets the black headphone carefully between them and turns the volume on the walkman up as loud as it goes and presses play.

_Show me, show me, show me how you do that trick..._

Piper smiles instantly. The Cure is her favorite of Alex's mother's bands - meaning they're the least screechy and angry sounding - and Alex now has dozens of mixtapes floating around that are dominated by their songs, usually saved for when Piper's over.

Beside her, Alex's eyes are closed, and she's humming almost inaudibly, but Piper keeps her eyes open and trained on the familiar sight of Alex's glow in the dark stars, her invented constellations that pre-date even their friendship.

* * *

High school brings GPAs and honors classes and fifty or so clubs compared to middle school's dozen. And it brings pressure.

Alex starts out in honors classes, too, so she and Piper have several together, but that won't last. High school also brings looser supervision and a larger campus, and the allure of skipping class is too strong.

"What does it matter?" Alex says one day at lunch after Piper admonishes her for skipping Geometry to smoke on the baseball bleachers. "It's not like I'm going to college."

Piper does a double take. At fifteen, in ninth grade, college seems far enough away for Alex to sound completely unbothered by this fact, but for Piper, college has always been bearing down, now more than ever. "What? Why aren't you going to college?"

Her jaw tensing, Alex gets the slightest flash of that old look in her eyes, the one that paradoxically mingles shame and defiance. "I feel like you should know this, Pipes, but college costs a shit ton of money."

"There are scholarships."

Alex makes an unattractive snorting sound. "Yeah, for _geniuses_. Geniuses who also play sports _and_ run a bunch of bullshit clubs. Even if I studied as much as, well, _you_, I'm not getting a scholarship."

"Okay, so student loans."

"_Fuck_ no. Be in debt for my entire adult life? No way. You've seen my mom. Our apartment _smells_ like fuckin' debt." Alex takes in the genuinely troubled look on Piper's face and rolls her eyes. "And not everyone needs college, dummy. I don't even know what I want to do with my life. What are _you_ going to do with your fancy ass college degree?"

"I...don't know." She doesn't. Piper's never felt a pull toward a particular career path. She's good at a lot of things and great at very little. And her dad has a way of making it seem like the mere name of the college is the whole point, rather than what she does there. More defensively than she intends, Piper adds, "God, it's not like I have to know _right_ _now_."

"Whoa, easy there," Alex's eyes are dancing fondly in that infuriatingly amused way. It's her _that's so Piper_ look. "I'm not your career counselor. Or your dad." She reaches across and steals a fry from Piper's tray. "But I succeeded in my goal."

"What goal?"

"I got you too flustered to lecture me on skipping class."

* * *

In October, Cody Lionel, quite possibly nursing a dormant crush since the beginning of middle school, asks her to go with him to the high school football game one Friday night, and while there is really no _going with_ involved - they arrive separately_ - _it means sitting with him during the game, and getting her soda and hot dog paid for. Their team is infamously abysmal, and by the second half the freshmen class has migrated to the hills on either side of the stadium bleachers, lying around on the grass in clusters and barely watching the game. Cody leans back with his head in Piper's lap, and she finds she kind of likes running her fingers through his dark curls, likes the way the girls who aren't cuddled with a boy glance at them with envy.

After the game, the freshmen in their group start scrambling around for rides from older siblings or friends or parents. Cody takes Piper's hand and leads her to his dad's truck, along with Tyler Fletcher (Cody's best friend, who's on the basketball team _and_ the highest honors classes) and his girlfriend Lane Groft. They get dropped off at Friendly's, where most of their cluster from the hill have reconvened. They have to pull three tables together, and they're all joking around so much that it's hard to distinguish separate chatter and laughter. Piper's feeling warm and grown up and wonderfully part of something, until Diane Vause comes over to the table to take their order.

Diane brightens her smile a few notches and winks at Piper, but doesn't say anything beyond that. She doesn't seem fazed to see her there, but Piper suddenly feels like she's done something terrible, even though she patently has not...she'd asked Alex to come to the football game, and Alex had laughed in her face.

But _still_.

Piper's clams up in the group's conversation, all at once feeling silly and inexplicably _weak_, as though she has been found out, exposed as someone who needs a _crowd. _

It's Friday night, and suddenly she wants to be at Alex's apartment, on Alex's roof, listening to mix tapes and watching Alex smoke and sneak sips of vodka before Diane gets home. She wants to play Slap Jack or Clue, wants to have a dance party in Alex's tiny living room. She doesn't want to be here with these people she barely knows.

After Diane delivers plates of burgers and fries, Piper impulsively leaps to her feet, mutters something about the bathroom, and speed walks after Diane across the restaurant.

She catches her right before they reach the kitchen. "Everything okay, baby?"

"Yeah. I just wanted to say hi." Heat floods Piper's cheeks instantly, as she hears how that sounds: like she would have been embarrassed to say hi in front of the others.

Diane doesn't seem to think anything of it. She only laughs a little and gives Piper a one armed hug. "Hey yourself. You been at the football game?" Piper nods. "We get our asses kicked?"

"Yeah."

"Figured. You guys look like you're having fun anyway."

"I..." _Shit_. There's a completely inexplicable lump working its way up Piper's throat. "I asked Alex to come. But - "

Diane's laughing again. "Doubt Alex would have much fun at a football game, huh? Or _be_ much fun."

"Not much, no."

"I'm sure she's home smoking up the apartment, which she thinks I don't know about." That coaxes a slight smirk from Piper. Diane's smile softens a little, her eyes almost gentle. "You go have fun with your friends, baby. But first tell me what dessert you like...I'm gonna pretend we made an extra."

The next night, Alex comes over to Piper's house, and her dad takes them to the video store and picks up a pizza, and they stay up half the night watching _Ferris Bueller's Day Off _and _The Big Chill _and telling Cal to leave them alone, and it feels so normal that Piper immediately starts to feel stupid about her reaction at Friendly's that night.

But Alex doesn't mention it, even though her mom must've told her, and she doesn't have much interest in hearing about Cody Lionel, either.

That stays true for the next four months that Cody and Piper are going out. For that time, Piper's "in school" friends become more all purpose friends, and sometimes Piper feels bad for how much she likes being part of a group. But she almost likes the fact of the group more than the people themselves. She spends a lot of time imaging how they look to other people, reveling in the Kodak image: young, attractive people, laughing together. Leaning against a boy, an object of desire. Something insular and selective. They are the sort of polished, presentable friends she's supposed to have. Together, they are what a group of teenagers are supposed to look like.

Piper has an affection for them all as a unit, but no particular fondness for anyone in particular, even Cody. But for that, she still has Alex. Alex is weekend afternoons at the dingy little record shop or used bookstores. Alex is Saturday night sleepovers, music and movies and junk food. Alex is eye rolling or tongues pushed between teeth or eyes crossed like morons when they pass each other in the hall. Alex is for saying all the thoughts inside her head, the serious or the meaningless. Alex is the one calmly asking if she needs to kick Cody's ass when he and Piper break up and he immediately starts going out with Brooke Lewis. Alex is the reason Piper actually doesn't care that much about getting dumped.

Alex is still her best friend.

* * *

By sophomore year, even Alex has ditched their 'lone wolf plus one' act. She has 'in school friends', too, an eclectic mix of theatre techies and art students and just plain burnouts. Basically, the people who gather on the baseball bleachers to skip class and smoke.

Piper doesn't like Alex's other friends, which is fair, because Alex doesn't like hers, either. But _really_, it's completely different. Alex doesn't like people like Cody or Tyler or Lane or Brooke or Jesse because she thinks she's _above_ them, somehow. Piper doesn't like Alex's friends because they make her feel lame and uncool. The first few times she approached Alex in front of them, Alex always introduced her by saying, "we've been friends since fourth grade." Like she had to _justify_ it.

Sophomore year brings driving, and most of Piper's friends come out of their sixteenth birthday with brand new licenses and less than new cars. Moving the Group of Friends outside of school is easier than ever, and suddenly there are real hang outs and real dates (dates that end in the backseat of the car with a boy's hand up her shirt). There are fewer open Saturday nights.

Sophomore year also brings AP classes and an intense workload. Piper just edges into the top six on the tennis team, so it brings daily practices and matches that actually matter. Brochures of summer academic programs start coming to the house, and her father sticks the most prestigious ones on the refrigerator.

In February Alex gets caught with Liz Moony, a diminutive techie with a blue streaked pixie cut who runs lights for school musicals and always smell faintly of weed, in the auditorium's light booth, both of them half naked, during school hours. Piper hears this through other people, people who barely know Alex, and she feels sick and angry at the source.

Alex has _never_ mentioned Liz Moony to her. Alex hasn't said she's dating anyone, or kissing anyone, or _anything_. What the hell kind of best friendship is that?

_Really_.

After school Piper drives her new (slightly used) car over to Alex's apartment, faces her newly suspended best friend, and starts in with a fit of righteous indignation. "I had to hear about it from Josh Newburn. Not even _from_ Josh...I just heard him telling Lane. What the hell, Alex?"

Her arms crossed over her chest, Alex rolls her eyes heavenward. "Fucking hell, Pipes. I've been outed to the whole school. People I don't even know are talking about my personal business, and all you care about is that you weren't the first to know?"

"_Please_, your 'personal business'. If you cared so much about being outed you wouldn't have been screwing on school property." Alex's lips curl in on themselves, badly suppressing a smug smirk. Wisely, she doesn't bother denying that, and Piper continues, "I'm supposed to be your _best friend_. I didn't even know you had a girlfriend."

"She's not my girlfriend."

"So what is she?"

"Ehhhh." Alex waves her hand spastically and shrugs, apparently indicating the complexity of her relationship with Liz Moony.

"Have you been dating other girls?"

"I don't know if I'd say _dating_."

Piper's stomach swoops unpleasantly. "Why don't I know any of this? For all I knew, you'd never even kissed a girl." Alex laughs at that, loudly, giving an indication of just how far from true it is, and somehow that makes Piper feel worse.

"Hey..." Alex makes a concentrated effort to wipe the amusement from her face. "Don't make that face at me. You look like I kicked your puppy. What's the big deal?"

_Jesus_.

"You don't _tell_ me anything," Piper insists, the slightest hint of petulance threading through her voice. It's not as if she hasn't seen Alex lately. They spent Sunday afternoon wandering around thrift shops and bookstores for nearly three hours.

"Like _you_ tell me everything," Alex counters, but she still just sounds amused. Not like she's emotionally invested in the argument. "I haven't heard a word from you about Jesse fucking Campbell." Piper's frown deepens, unable to deny that. Finally, Alex sighs and says in a conciliatory voice, "Look, Pipes, it doesn't matter. We've never really been the kind of friends who talk about that stuff."

Piper scowls. "If we're not that kind of friends, it's _your_ fault."

"How do you figure?"

"Cody Lionel. In middle school."

Alex pauses for a moment, like she has to dredge that one up from the dark corners of memory, and then she grins a little. "Okay, fine. I take all responsibility. But to be fair, if you had listened to me back then about Cody Lionel, Captain Bra Snapper, you might have saved yourself the trouble of repeating the mistake last year. Just food for thought."

Still miserable, Piper plops down on the couch, looking small and forlorn. Alex, damn her, still looks way too amused by the whole thing, but it's the kind of amusement that's built entirely on affection, and she sits down beside Piper and slings a comforting arm around her shoulder. "Pipes. I know_ Seventeen_ magazinesuggests otherwise, but the whole dating and sex thing is _not_ the most important thing we can be talking about, okay? When someone really matters, I'm sure I'll tell you. And you'll tell me, right?"

"Yeah," Piper admits.

"See?" Alex rubs her hands together like that's the whole problem solved. "Now. You want a beer?"

"No, I drove."

"Ooh, get a load of Fancy. New question. Do you want to drive me to Wendy's? Or anywhere with food. I'm fucking starving, and there's literally nothing to eat in this place."

"Sure."

They pile into Piper's car, and Alex grins when she realizes one of her mixtapes is playing in the cassette player. She slides her seat back far enough to put her feet on the dashboard, singing along to the middle of the song.

_We're on a rooooaddd to nowhere..._

Piper's quiet, just listening to Alex's tuneless singing. She never gives voice to the real thing that's scaring her. That something is changing between them, that they're moving further away from each other. That they won't be able to stop it.

* * *

Piper at sixteen is stressed out. Piper at sixteen is a ball of anxiety. Piper at sixteen is terrified.

Her schedule the first semester of junior year is AP everything, and Piper is finally learning she is not as smart as she thought. She is _smart_, sure, but sometimes she doesn't feel smart enough. She isn't smart enough to just _get_ this, for it to come easily, to remember everything she hears in class and have that be enough. She is the kind of smart that is just as dependent on good study skills as it is on her IQ...both of which are currently failing her, eaten up by AP Chemistry, which she just can't quite grab onto, and AP US History, which isn't so much _difficult_ as it is packed full to bursting with information, and AP English, which comes the easiest but has the most work, full novels and essays every week, and AP Statistics, where she is completely lost.

Then her father brings her a gift of SAT prep books and doesn't notice that Piper barely keeps herself from bursting into tears.

It falls apart as early as October. It's only the first progress report, a grade that means literally nothing to her GPA or overall standing, and it's not even a fair prediction of the class as a whole. There are too few assignments, and her chemistry grade was torpedoed by her last test, so even though Piper should have seen it coming, she can't stop her hands from shaking when she stares down at the big fat C.

It's her first C ever, and her mental mantra of _thismeansnothingthismeansnothingthismeansnothing_ is drowned out by the simple knowledge that statistics, her last class of the day, most likely holds the same grade.

She is too old, probably, to hide in the bathroom and cry over a grade. So Piper resists the urge; she folds the progress report neatly and puts it in her locker and goes calmly to lunch.

Even though they have the same lunch time, Alex isn't in the cafeteria, which isn't unusual lately, but Piper suddenly needs to see her. Alex is the only person in the world who can make her laugh when she feels this shitty, and Piper's suddenly craving it like a drug.

She leaves the cafeteria without eating and heads toward the baseball field.

She can pick Alex out even from a distance, amid the cluster of darkly clad burn outs, and like an idiot, Piper waves. Alex lifts a hand in response; they're all staring at her now, and the last twenty-five feet to bleachers feel impossibly long.

"Hey, Pipes." Alex smiles, but it's only at about half wattage. A girl whose name Piper doesn't know has her head pillowed on Alex's lap, and for some reason that pisses Piper off.

"Hi." Piper hovers awkwardly in front of the bottom bleacher, wishing she was the sort of person who could just flop down in the middle of them and feel perfectly comfortable. Her best friend is there, so she _should_ be that person. She isn't sure if the deficiency is her fault or Alex's.

But then Alex squints at her and tilts her head with that scrutinizing look she gets. "You okay?"

Gratitude spills over in Piper's gut. Sometimes the simplest things help, like the knowledge that she has someone who can take one look at her and know something's wrong. She feels a little better already. "Yeah. Well, I guess. Kind of a shitty day. Got a C on the AP Chem progress report." Piper's proud of how casual she sounds, how off handed, even though she knows Alex will realize what a big deal it is for her.

But the comment provokes light snorts and unkind guffaws from the lifeless group of stoners.

"Oh, _no_." A guy with three eyebrow rings and white boy dreadlocks says dryly. "The _tragedy_."

"Who's going to play you in the film adaptation?" This from the girl on Alex's lap.

Bitch.

"Hey, AP is serious business," says Jack Sadler, a rare showboat in this crowd, who plays the lead in all drama productions that don't require someone overtly masculine. "The whole trajectory of your life is affected. Unemployable. Homelessness. May as well apply for welfare right now."

Piper looks at Alex, but she's just smiling her _That's so Piper_ smile. She's never noticed how much condescension it holds.

For a second, Piper can't breathe, she's so furious. Alex knows what this means for her. Alex knows it's a big deal. And Piper is suddenly sick to death of this. She works her ass off and worries herself sick over the very thing these people - Alex included - find so contemptible.

"Fuck you," she spats suddenly, poisonously. The words are somewhat generally directed, but she's staring right at Alex.

Then she turns on her heel and goes.

"Aw, Pipes, don't be that way."

She keeps walking.

"_Piper_."

Huh. Alex's voice is closer; Piper hadn't expected her to follow.

She hopes she stood up so fast that bitchy girl's head hit the bleachers.

Piper is too old to run away from someone, and Alex's strides are longer so soon she's keeping pace at Piper's side. "C'mon, don't be so pissy. They're assholes, but they're like that with everyone."

"Fine."

"You don't have to get all mad."

"I'm not mad."

"Then why won't you stop walking?"

"Because I'm done. I have no idea why we even bother trying to be friends anymore, so let's just _not_."

In the intensity of the words, Piper actually outpaces Alex, and she can't help but glance back over her shoulder. She's expecting to see Alex rolling her eyes, more in disgust than fondness this time, expecting to hear Alex tell her to stop being so fucking melodramatic.

But instead Alex's standing stone still, her face slowly crumpling in on itself, and her eyes seem huge and overly saturated behind her glasses. She's standing there in a Clash T-shirt under that stupid white pleather jacket she and Piper had found in a church basement thrift store last year, and it's the first time Piper's ever thought Alex looks _small_.

It's the first time in years Alex has reminded Piper of the nine year old new kid trying really hard not to cry on the bus.

It turns Piper's insides to ice, and all the anger in her gut turns instantly inward, but she doesn't change her course of action. She keeps walking, more desperate to get away than ever. Her vision blurs with tears, but they aren't tears of guilt or sympathy or even anger. They're tears squeezed straight from panic, the sort of panic that comes as a little kid seeing their mom cry for the first time...panic from finding out someone you thought was invincible isn't.

Piper is too old to hide in the school bathroom and cry over a grade, but she is not too old to hide in the school bathroom and cry over her best friend. So that's what she does.


	2. Chapter 2

For the rest of the day Piper is slipping, her fingers curled around the edge of a cliff, and it's taking every ounce of will she possesses not to let go and completely lose it.

She's forgotten about the bold angry C on her Chemistry report. She's forgotten _everything_ except the look on Alex's face. The memory is everywhere, thick and heavy in her guts, coiled around her veins and squeezing, wedged in the forefront of her brain turning everything else into blurry white noise.

Alex, looking like Piper had just kicked her in the chest. Alex, unshed tears making her eyes look so green it hurt. Alex, so achingly familiar, in her stupid pleather jacket and stupid band shirt and stupid black Converse with red laces.

_Fuck_.

Piper replays the moment, lives in it, knows it by heart, and objectively, it shouldn't be unfixable. She'd said something stupid, an overreaction born from stress and anger. She could apologize, backpedal, pretend it never happened.

But the moment had been thick with something else, some intangible sense that the second those words left Piper's mouth she couldn't take them back. Like an unspoken truth had finally been spoken, as though the words had been lying like an ulcer beneath Piper's tongue for months before they finally slipped.

But Alex's _face_.

If she's honest, Piper isn't surprised by what she'd said. It was Alex's reaction that had shocked her.

For awhile now, maybe even longer than she'd realized, Piper's been anxiously waiting for the moment Alex finally realizes she isn't anything special, that she's lame and uncool and embarrassingly weak. She's been waiting for Alex to cut the ties. Been waiting for Alex to hurt her.

Somehow, she'd never considered that she had the power to hurt Alex.

* * *

What's depressing is how effortless it is.

Alex slips seamlessly out of her life; Piper doesn't even have to _try_ to avoid her. For a long time now, any time they've spent together has involved specific planning, or at least, a specific intention to seek Alex out (or vice versa). Their natural, day to day paths rarely come close. At most, if Piper's mother ever sends her to the store for something, she has to drive an extra ten minutes to hit the grocery store where Alex _hasn't_ been bagging groceries since last summer.

(Over the next month, Piper only sees Alex three times at school.)

Piper immerses herself in the parts of her life Alex never had anything to do with, all those careful social constructions and a studied persona. She pretends to be okay, and her school friends wouldn't know her well enough to assume otherwise.

(The first time is four days after the fight. Piper's in the parking lot before school, gathered around Lane's BMW with a bunch of other kids, Jesse Campbell's arm around her, when Alex gets out of a car Piper's never seen before, driven by a girl with tattoos up and down her arms. Alex flicks a gaze over to Piper, and for half a second they look at each other, but there's nothing in Alex's face anymore. She turns away, like a stranger.)

Piper gets a B on her next chemistry test. She wins a tennis match. She and her friends drive to the state fair one Saturday, and take photos to prove how much fun it was. They start going to Jesse's house after football games to drink and watch the guys play video games, and her mother is so pleased when she says she's sleeping over at Lane or Brooke's house that she doesn't think to question it.

(The second time, she ducks out of AP US History to go to the bathroom and nearly collides with Alex on her way in. For a horrible, gut punching moment she thinks Alex has been crying - her eyes are red - but then she pushes roughly past Piper, the scent of weed trailing behind.)

Piper's mother tells her she's proud of how well she's doing lately. She watches the school's horrible football team lose its homecoming game, and she goes to the dance with Jesse and the others. When the pictures get developed, Piper can barely look at her own stiff, practiced smile. She gets an A on a chemistry lab report, pulling her grade firmly out from the fire. She signs up for an SAT date.

(The third time she oversleeps and is nearly late for first period, so she cuts down the science corridor where Alex's infrequently visited locker is. Alex is there, by herself, looking in no particular hurry even though the halls are emptying out as kids head to class. She's drinking bottled water, which Piper is fairly sure Alex has never done in her life, and she can't help but double take at the incongruous detail. But then Alex takes a long swig, and her face muscles tighten in the slightest grimace, and Piper figures out it isn't water.)

She fucks Jesse Campbell in his bedroom one Friday after a football game, with his parents asleep and the rest of their friends passed out drunk in his basement. When it's over, Piper feels obscurely angry - at Jesse, at herself, at the stupid hype sex gets - because it didn't do what it was supposed to. She doesn't feel any better, doesn't feel like a more complete person, doesn't feel like Jesse knows her any better, doesn't feel any closer to him. She wants to go home.

(She doesn't see Alex anymore after that. Even when the tennis team leaves in the middle of the school day to attend Regionals, and the bus pulls past the baseball fields, Piper leans her forehead against the window and squints the students clustered among the bleachers, but she can't pick out black hair or a white jacket or anything else she knows.)

* * *

"Piper, telephone!"

Piper's in her bedroom meticulously writing out weekly notecards for US History, and she groans softly when her mother's voice floats up the stairs and reaches her. It's probably Jesse, who can't stop talking about his parents being out of town this weekend, and the party he's going to throw, and how Piper can stay over (as if his parents being in the house has made much difference in the past).

She gets up from her desk and sits on the edge of the bed, grabbing the phone from her nightstand.

"Hello?"

"Piper? It's Diane."

_Fuck_.

Piper's insides seize up, just like that: her stomach careens against her lungs which are being suffocated by her ribcage. It takes her as second to extract a word from her throat. "Oh. Um. Hi. Hey."

"I was just hoping you might've seen Alex this week. Over the past few days, maybe?"

"I -. No. I haven't seen her." Not for the past few days. Not for the past _month. _ Haven't talked to her in more than two months. Piper feels dizzy. "Is everything okay?"

"Well, I haven't seen her in a few days. Which isn't so strange - we're both in and out so much - but there were a couple messages on the machine about her missing school. Also not strange, 'cept she's usually home often enough to erase them. But I called the store, and they said she's missed a couple shifts..." Diane's voice bends slightly under the weight of worry, and she trails off. In the space of the ensuing silence, genuine fear works its way down Piper's spine: Alex thinks nothing of skipping school, but work is different. She relishes those paychecks.

"They said it's not the first time," Diane continues, her voice steady again. "So it's not that I think anything's _happened_. I just worry not knowing where she is. She hasn't been herself lately." There's nothing accusatory in Diane's voice - in fact, it almost sounds like she's forgotten there's someone on the other end of the phone - but Piper feels nauseous with guilt anyway. Alex tells her mom everything, so she must know. "You wouldn't have any idea where she might be? Or with who?"

"No." Her voice comes out high pitched and shaky, and Piper physically bites down on her lower lip and sucks in a sharp breath. "I'm sorry." _So fucking sorry fuck fuck fuck. "_I can, um..." Her voice catches and threatens to unravel as it occurs to Piper that she doesn't know what she can do. She knows no one to call, no place to go.

Then it hits her.

"She hangs out with some of the theater tech kids," Piper supplies, voice hurried and overeager. "There's a play in a couple days, some of them may have to be at the dress rehearsals...I can drive to the school, ask around."

_"_Would you?" Diane sounds so grateful, and that makes Piper's fear surge fresh; it has to be pretty bad for Alex's mom to worry. "Thanks so much, baby. Just give me a call if you find out anything?"

"I will." Piper's voice comes out tiny, and there's another apology on the tip of her tongue, but she's sure if she says it out loud she'll burst into tears. "I'll go right now."

* * *

She has a vague notion that dress rehearsals tend to go pretty late, and that at least a decent amount of tech crew is required, but Piper really has no idea, so she's relieved to pull up to the high school (after a hastily constructed lie to her mother about working on an English project with Lane) and see plenty of cars in front of the auditorium.

Soon she's entering the front of the building and, sure she'll be kicked out by the stressed out drama teacher if she goes in the theater itself, climbs the stairs until she gets to the lighting booth. There are five or six kids packed into the small space, and apparently every one of them reeks of pot.

"You can't be in here," one of the boys says almost lazily.

Piper scans the small group; she recognizes at least three of them from Alex's bleacher crowd, but knows only one by name: Liz Moony, the girl got caught hooking up with last year, in this same fucking lighting booth.

Shit.

"Liz?"

The girl blinks at Piper, looking only moderately interested in how Piper knows her name. "Yeah."

"Have you, um. Seen Alex lately?"

"Which one?"

"I. What?"

"Alex Maxwell or Alex Vause?"

"_Vause_."

A couple of the other techies make soft, scoffing sounds. Liz shakes her head. "Nah, she hasn't been to school in like...shit. A couple weeks? Girl's off the reservation."

Piper's chest feels hot. "What does that mean?"

Liz gives a bored shrug, already returning her attention to the lighting booth and whatever's going on on the stage below. "You know. Just _off_."

Wanting to throttle her, Piper grits out between clenched teeth, "Do you have any idea where she might _be_? It's important."

"Probably Will's place," the boy who told Piper she couldn't be there offers. She waits, but he doesn't expand. Piper's temper snaps.

"Who the fuck is Will?" She's practically seething, impatient with their single sentence answers, and apparently the sight of a blonde, preppy AP student cursing at them makes a few of them laugh.

"He sells us our weed," Liz says finally. "He's out of school. There are always people at his place."

It takes a few minutes of barely calm questioning, but Piper finally manages to figure out a street name and a basic description of Will's house. She thanks them even though she doesn't want to, and drives across town.

It's a small, uncared for place with a ton of beat up cars parked in the driveway and on the street. Piper's heart is lodged somewhere at the top of her windpipe as she walks toward the porch, her keys in her hand with the sharp end out, like she's afraid she might need a weapon. The front door is cracked open, and she can hear soft music but not a lot of talking from inside.

The old coward inside Piper is whispering warnings in the back of her head: _just go back she's probably not even here this isn't your type of place these aren't your type of people just forget it._

But it's ultimately drowned out by the voice repeating Liz's words: _Girl's off the reservation_.

Piper sighs and steps inside the house.

The living room is dimly lit, with a thin, consistent haze of smoke in the air, bongs and liquor bottles on every surface, and there are people sprawled all over beat up couches and mismatched lawn furniture. A few look like high schoolers, but mostly older. Most of them don't even register Piper's entrance.

It takes her a few seconds to adjust her vision, and then she gives the room a quick scan.

Alex is on one end of a couch, her legs stretched across another girl's lap.

"Alex!" Piper breathes it out before she can even figure out how to approach this.

Alex and a couple others swivel their heads toward her. Alex frowns, squints. "The fuck are you doing here?" She tilts her head, features twisting in slow confusion. "_Are_ you here?"

Piper has no idea what to make of that question. Most people in the room are now watching her with mild interest, but no one seems to think it's their place to ask why she's just walked into this house. "Al, can I talk to you?"

"You can't call me Al," Alex responds almost mildly.

A guy on the floor tilts his head back to look at her. "Girlfriend, Vause?"

Alex scoffs, unkindly. "Fuck no."

"Jesus," Piper mutters. She steps over a pyramid of beer bottles and goes to the couch, grabbing Alex's arm and hauling her forcibly to her feet. Alex lets out a whine. "Come here..."

A few people laugh at them as Piper drags Alex out of the house and onto the porch. Up close, she can see Alex's pupils are huge, her skin flushed and a little sweaty. Piper's stomach sinks. "Christ, Alex, what are you on?"

"Why, are you a DARE officer?" Alex asks snidely, affecting some sort of almost-European accent, God knows why.

"This isn't funny." It's so strange to have Alex in front of her after two and a half months. Piper's been missing the familiarity, the ease that came from being around Alex, so much it aches. But this isn't easy, and right now Alex doesn't seem familiar. Piper's not ready yet to figure out why. "What the hell is going on with you? You haven't been to school in weeks."

"Surprised you noticed," Alex mutters, and it's like a leaden weight crashing against Piper's chest, because of course she _hadn't_ noticed.

"C'mon, let's go, I'm taking you home - "

Alex wrenches her arm away before Piper can even tighten her grip. "No, you're not. I'm staying. We ordered pizza. Why are you even here?"

"Your mom called me," Piper says forcefully, thinking that'll get through. "She's worried because she has no idea where the fuck you are."

"Where the fuck is she ever?" Alex grits out in response, and instantly her eyes widen in shock at her own comment. Piper's never heard Alex say anything bad about her mom before; the regret on her face is instant and a little heartbreaking.

"I'll call her," Alex amends, in something slightly closer to her normal voice. "I'll call her right now, from inside. But you. You. Fuck you. Go away."

She starts back toward the house, but Piper grabs her arm again. "You can't do this."

Alex's eyes lock with hers, and they're so empty that for a second Piper wants to cry. "Why the hell not?"

This time Alex slams back into the house without giving Piper a chance to stop her.

Piper stands on the porch for two minutes, blinking back tears and wishing in vain that Alex might come back. When she doesn't, Piper stares at the number above the door, gets in her and car and drives home, and calls Diane Vause with Will's house address.

* * *

For the rest of the week, Piper looks for Alex at school. She's been hoping Diane stormed the house, rescued her daughter, and steered Alex immediately back on the right path, but while the rescuing bit is probably accurate enough, Piper's not sure if Diane's the sort of mother to force Alex back to some approximation of the straight and narrow.

All week it's like Piper's living with a scream stretched across her throat, aching to be let it out. She's sure she must seem a mess, like a disconnected freak, but none of her friends seem to notice that anything's off. But then, they also hadn't noticed any change two and a half months ago when she'd abruptly cut away one of the most important parts of her life.

Piper thinks again of that day, the bad day, and how before everything fell to shit one of the first things Alex had done was ask if she was okay. She'd taken one look at Piper and known something was wrong, even something stupid like a chemistry grade. Alex knows her. Alex _knew_ her, at least. And that's so much of what Piper misses, though it's no more her friends' fault than her own: she isn't herself with them. She's always putting in effort, always overly aware of how she's supposed to be. With Alex she never had to try.

She's been fooling herself all this time, too. Trying to pretend she's fine, that she can live this normal, expectations meeting life that doesn't include Alex. But now that Piper's seen her she feels the worse kind of homesick, the kind when you're missing something that isn't even a place. Something that doesn't exist anymore, that you can't get back to.

* * *

Saturday night is Jesse's idiotic house party. Piper puts some feeble thought into ways to get out of it, but in a fit of foolishness three hours before, she decides she can't let one encounter with Alex undo the rest of her life. And anyway, a night of heavy drinking doesn't sound so bad right now.

Piper's never really gotten drunk, all those nights in Jesse's basement with the others. Usually she drinks to the very edge of a warm, pleasant buzz and stops, but tonight she starts pour the party's vodka/Kool-Aid mix down her throat like it might erase the memory of Alex on that couch surrounded by unresponsive strangers.

But she still feels heavy with the stress of the past week, and so Piper's short and borderline bitchy to anyone who talks to her, especially Jesse. Jesus, it's all she can do not to shove him off every time he touches her.

After only an hour and a half of heavy partying, he comes up behind her and slips his arms around her waist. "Wanna go upstairs?"

"Already?" She turns to face him as an excuse to get out of his grip.

He smirks. "I didn't mean 'go upstairs for the night'. I meant 'go upstairs for half an hour'."

"Oh. Then no."

Jesse's face falls, and he scowls a little. "What's with you?"

"What?"

"You've looked fucking miserable all night."

"Maybe I am fucking miserable." Piper's drunk voice is all crisp, overly articulated syllables. "Not that you'd bother asking about it."

"I just asked!"

"Yeah, you asked _what's with you_. Not, y'know, _are you okay?_

"Are you okay?"

"Fuck off."

"Fine. _Shit_." He shakes his head like she's beyond help and walks back to his stupid fucking party, which suddenly seems so bland and predictable and embarrassing.

Piper takes a bottle of vodka from the kitchen and sits down in the middle of the staircase. She can just see into the dining room, where beer pong games are raging, and occasionally couples or groups of smokers step around her on their way up and down the stairs, but she doesn't talk to anyone else. Her mother thinks she's sleeping over at Lane's, and suddenly Piper regrets drinking at all because she can't just get in her car and drive herself home. She's stuck all night.

So, she sits alone, brooding and drinking and missing weekend nights in Alex's apartment.

* * *

"Hello?"

"You're home! You answered."

"Wha...Piper?"

"Yes. Me."

"What do you want?"

"I don't know. I wanted to see if you were home and safe. And also if you hate me."

"You sound...are you drunk?"

"Probably."

"Where are you?"

"Jesse's party. I looked at you for school. No. _For_ you _at_ school."

"I'm hanging up now. Go back to your party, Piper."

"No, wait. You didn't answer the question. About if you hate me."

"We're not fucking talking about this right now."

"But are you okay? Because you're taking drugs."

"Jesus Christ."

"Alex, I'm really really sorry."

"I gotta go."

"No! Wait wait wait. You're at home. That's what I wanted to know. I want to come see you."

"Doesn't sound like you're going anywhere."

"Yes. I have my car."

"_Piper_. You can't drive right now."

"I can't stay here. I don't want to sleep with Jesse."

"So don't sleep with Jesse."

"No, but I don't want to even _sleep_ sleep with him. Beside him. And I don't want to be at this party. I hate these people."

"You've seemed to like them just fine."

"No. I like you. I miss you."

"You're just drunk. This is a drunk dial, you realize that?"

"I'm not that drunk. I'm going to have some water and come see you."

"_No you are not_. Piper. You're _not _driving anywhere. Promise me."

"I want to leave so bad, Al...it's not that far. I can't stay."

"Jesus fucking _shit_...fine. Piper? Listen to me. I'm coming to get you."

"You don't have a car."

"Yeah, thanks, asshole. I can get my mom's. Where does this idiot live?"

"Are you really gonna come?"

"Well, yeah. If you wrap your car around a fucking tree now it'd be my fault. Where are you?"

"His parents' bedroom."

"Fuck Piper, the address."

"Oh, yeah. Sandhurst. Drive or Street. I don't know. It's past the country club. House is something that ends with a seven. It's the one with all the cars."

"Okay. Just do _not_ fucking get behind a damn wheel."

"Okay. I won't. You're really coming?"

"Jesus. Stay where you are."

* * *

She stays where she is.

Exactly where she is, in the floor of Jesse's parents bedroom, the nearly empty vodka bottle and cordless phone cradled in her lap. Piper's been waiting for nearly half an hour when the door flies open and Jesse comes in, his face stormy.

It relaxes when he sees her. "Oh, good. I saw the light, thought people were hooking up on my parents bed."

"Go away," she slurs out, idiotically annoyed because he isn't Alex, here to take her home.

Jesse's eyes narrow, annoyed but also bewildered. "Fuck, Pipes. Remind me not to try to get you to drink more ever again."

Piper groans and stretches out on the floor, facing the ceiling so she doesn't have to look at him. "Don't call me that."

"Jesus, what's making you such a bitch?"

"Maybe I've always been a bitch."

"Probably." This from the doorway, where Alex is suddenly standing with her arms crossed, her eyes taking Jesse in with cool dislike.

He stares at her, confused. "What the hell?"

Alex ignores him, her eyes snapping over his shoulder to meet Piper's. "Ready?"

Piper's beaming at Alex like she's just performed a miracle by simply showing up. "Yes." She grabs onto the side of Jesse's parents' bed, scrambling for purchase to pull herself up.

Alex rolls her eyes and walks forward to help her, at the same time Jesse demands, "Wait a second, are you _leaving_?"

"Yes."

"Oh, c'mon. If I did something, just tell me, okay? You don't have to _go_."

With Piper steady on her feet, Alex lets go of her arm and glances at Jesse. "Take a hint, she wants to leave."

"Hey, _you_ aren't even supposed to be in my house. This isn't your business." Then, under his breath, he mutters, "Fuckin' dyke."

Alex lets out a short, scoffing laugh, unperturbed.

Piper takes a step forward and drives her fist into his nose.

"Jesus!" Alex's eyes are wide, her mouth open, and she looks like she's caught between shock and laughter.

"_Fuck!_" Muffled outrage and pain from Jesse, his hands cupped to his face and sticky with blood. "What the _fuck_, Piper?!"

"Pipes, let's go," Alex says firmly, grabbing her arm and dragging her out of the room, through the oblivious party, and across Jesse's yard. She doesn't let go of her arm until she's deposited Piper in the passenger seat of her mother's ancient car.

* * *

The Rolling Stones are playing on the tape deck, something quiet and slightly mournful about _another mad, mad day_.

Neither of them say anything for awhile, just let the music fill the silence. Piper leans her head against the window, and it occurs to her that she's never been in the car with Alex driving. They'd always take Piper's car, and there was never any reason for her to relinquish the drivers seat. Now, though, her eyes heavy and her brain fuzzy with vodka, Piper decides she likes it. It feels safe, like being a little kid asleep in the backseat, home by the time she woke up.

"Am I taking you to your place?" Alex asks eventually.

"I can't go there drunk."

Alex sighs. "You can't sneak in?"

Piper throws her a _have you met me?_ sort of look, and Alex's lips twitch like she might almost maybe be _considering_ smiling. For just a second they're friends again.

_Fuck_ it feels like the best thing in the world.

"Fine. You can crash at my place." Like it'd be some one off event, like they haven't done that a hundred times before.

"Okay. Thanks. I like it there."

There's a muscle pulsing in Alex's jaw, and she doesn't look at Piper again until they reach her apartment. She walks slowly up the stairs, right behind Piper and her shaky, newborn calf steps. When they get inside, the living room is dark and empty. "Where's your mom?" Piper hisses in a stage whisper; she assumes if the car was home Diane must have a night off.

"Asleep in my room," Alex answers in a normal voice. "Sit." Piper thumps obediently down on the couch. "I'm getting you water. And I'd really fucking love it if you didn't puke, okay?"

"Okay." Piper leans back into the couch cushions, heaving a long, contented sigh. She really does love it here, and she's suddenly overwhelmed by a rush of affection. "Alex?"

"Mmm?"

"Alex."

"What?"

"You're my best friend. I love you so much."

"Oh, good, you're one of those drunks," Alex sits on the couch beside Piper, handing over a glass of water and wearing an expression of weary indulgence.

"But I mean it."

"I'm sure you do."

"You really are my favorite person."

"Okay."

"And I'm afraid I ruined it." Her voice snaps in half, and honestly, _fuck_ alcohol, because no one should ever go from zero to crying so quickly. But the tears come fast, and her chest starts convulsing, breath coming in harsh, gasping sobs. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..."

"Oh, fuck, Pipes..." It's that voice. The _that's so Piper_ voice, all fond exasperation, and it makes her cry harder.

"I know I hurt your feelings. I didn't meant to. I didn't think I could." Wow, drunk crying is horrible. It doesn't stop even when she manages to talk, every word wet and wavering and high pitched, like a little kid who can't catch their breath long enough to explain what's wrong. "But I'm so sorry, and I missed you so much. You know that, right? You know?"

"I know." Alex shuffles a little closer to Piper, looking slightly alarmed at the rapidity of her breakdown.

"And I'm s-sorry I didn't talk to you. Your first day of school, when Jessica what's-her-thingie was picking on you, I wanted to go talk to you. But I didn't because I'm a chickenshit coward and I'm sorry I didn't sit with you on the bus..."

All this comes in a rush of weeping, and Alex is gaping at her, her lips twitching slightly, almost smiling. "Jesus, kid, you're really going deep tracks with this apology, huh?" She reaches out and wrapping a hand around the nape of Piper's neck. "We were nine. _That_ one I've moved past."

"But I'm still a selfish cowardly bitch," Piper declares mournfully.

"And I'm a condescending asshole. Who's also sorry. Okay?"

The condescending asshole pulls the sleeve of her sweater up over her hands, curling her nails into the fabric, then reaches out and wipes the tears rolling down Piper's face. For a moment, Piper's brain actually clears, and she meets Alex's eyes. Holds them.

"Al, when your mom called me last week I was really scared." The muscles in Piper's face tighten, her lips trembling, and a fresh wave of tears hit her, and this time it doesn't feel like just the alcohol; it feels like these are the tears she's been holding back all week. "Like really, really scared."

Alex pushes her glasses up on her head, and her whole face goes soft around the edges. "Then I'm sorry about that, too."

A sob rips out of Piper's throat, and then she's really crying, telling herself it's the alcohol, just the alcohol. She bends at the waist at the same time Alex reaches for her, and somehow she ends up with her head on Alex's lap, crying against her faded jeans. Alex strokes her hair, long, gentle fingers slipping between strands or tracing patterns on Piper's neck.

Slowly, she finally starts to reign in the crying, but Piper doesn't want to move. Not with Alex's hands against her skin, not with Alex so close and smelling so much like herself it makes Piper's heart tighten.

She feels exhausted, but in a good way, suddenly overwhelmed by a marrow deep relief of having this back. It feels like coming home.

When she's gone quiet long enough, she hears Alex ask cautiously, "You okay?"

"Yeah." Piper rolls over so she's staring up at Alex, and because she can't _not_ be needy as hell, apparently, asks in a small voice, "So you don't hate me?"

Almost absently, Alex hooks one finger around a strand of hair on Piper's forehead and brushes it back. "No, moron. I love you."

They've said that to each other before, dozens of time, usually in an amused, non-declarative way: _This is why I love you. Oh my God I love you so much right now. You know you love me_.

This sounds different. There's a weight behind it that keeps the words jangling around in Piper's chest. She closes her eyes, because _fuck_, alcohol makes you tired, and because she wants to fall asleep with Alex this close, with Alex's words still caught in her ears.

* * *

She wakes up with a bullet of a headache, shaky muscles, and a hollow stomach. But she wakes up and Alex is still there, and that counts for more.

Alex is still mostly sitting up on the couch, which couldn't have been comfortable all night, but she just smirks down at Piper when she sees her eyes open. "Morning, Drunky."

"Shit," Piper says. "I didn't meant to fall asleep on you." She kind of did, technically, but Piper would like to think her sober self would have been more accommodating, in spite of the comfort of Alex's lap.

"It's fine."

A groan curls its way out of Piper's throat, and she screws her eyes shut against the light. She can feel Alex's laughter.

"Aw, is this baby's first hangover? Let me get the camera."

"Shut up," Piper moans feebly, skimming quickly through her memory, trying to isolate if there's anything she should feel embarrassed about.

Probably all of it. But it got her here, so whatever.

"Here, get up." Alex taps her lightly on the top of the head. "I've had to pee for like an hour."

"_Ugh_..." Piper sits up, a little dizzy. "Sorry. You should've woken me up."

Alex waves a hand dismissively and disappears into the bathroom, rolling her neck as she goes. Piper shakes out her own stiff, shaky muscles. The apartment seems empty, which means Diane's probably left for a Sunday morning shift somewhere.

There's the slightest awkwardness between Piper and Alex, a sense that they're both having to try not to be awkward, but Piper is willing to accept that as a side effect of months of silence, and a reconciliation that, on one half at least, was conducted under the influence.

When Alex returns, she flashes Piper a smirky grin. "You look like you need hangover food. I'll make some eggs. I left you a toothbrush in the bathroom, cause no offense, you need it. If you want to take a shower you know where the towels and shit are."

"Thanks."

Piper brushes her teeth for a solid ten minutes, then jumps in the shower, feeling more like a functional human being as soon as the hot water hits her. She can hear music playing faintly from the living room, because there's always music playing here. Piper smiles and tilts her head under the spray.

She's thinking about Alex's _I love you, _still trying to figure out the weight of it, every angle and edge. She's thinking about Alex's fingers murmuring across the back of her neck. She's thinking about punching Jesse, and how he probably told everyone and she's basically thrown a grenade into the center of her social life. She's thinking that she really doesn't give a fuck.

* * *

Piper doesn't feel like putting on her dirty party clothes, so she darts into Alex's room and finds a The Who T-shirt she occasionally borrowed to sleep in when she stayed over, and a pair of sweat pants she has to hike up and still drag at the ankles.

She hovers in the doorway of the living room and watches Alex, in her shorts and tank top and bare feet, hair still morning messy. She's making eggs at the stove, her back to Piper, and she's singing to Bonnie Raitt, kind of quiet, like that makes up for her being entirely tone deaf.

Piper tilts her head against the doorframe, staying quiet. Her heart feels too big for her chest. Her blood is pumping faster through her veins.

It's impulsive and reckless. She strides swiftly and purposefully across the room to the kitchen, puts her hands on Alex's waist. Alex turns into her, her lips parted to speak, when Piper reaches up and swallows whatever Alex was going to say. It's maybe the first time Piper's ever been brave.

It's not what Piper would have expected, though she had no idea until this moment that she might have had expectations. It's not uncertain and tentative and gentle: it's an earthquake. They've barely made contact when Alex's hands come up to cup Piper's face, and she kisses back like she was somehow waiting for this. Her lips are soft, softer than any boys, but the kissing isn't, Alex's tongue brazen and exploratory; she fastens one hand against Piper's jaw and winds the other through her hair. They both taste like toothpaste, and Piper feels drunk again, but in the best way possible, light and dizzy and out of her head.

They pull back at the same moment, look at each other in hazy eyed wonder for half a second, then burst out laughing.

"Jesus," Piper murmurs eventually.

She's expecting questions and incredulity and quips, but instead Alex is staring at her intently. She's worrying a strand of Piper's hair between her fingers, and she traces it to its end before staying, "You can't fuck with me." Her voice is stern and commanding, but Alex's eyes give her away - wide beggar eyes, all vulnerability and want. "I'm usually a huge proponent of the whole 'may as well experiment' argument. Experimental girls have been great for me. But you..._you_ don't get to do that. Not with me, anyway."

Piper smiles, puffing out a short, breathless laugh. "Alex. I've hated every single one of your girlfriends."

"They're never my girlfriends," she corrects automatically, as though her aversion to relationship labels is at all relevant right now. _Jesus_.

"Shut up." Piper kisses her, fast and soft, to make sure the command is heeded. "Not the point. I'm just saying. Every time you come to school in some girls' car, or lay all over someone on the bleachers, or get caught in the damn lighting booth with your clothes off - _stop smirking you ass_ - I'm mentally calling these girls I don't even know bitches. I hate it. It's ridiculous. _You're_ ridiculous."

Alex laughs, smile unsurprisingly smug. "That's a pretty compelling argument." Her thumb traces the curve of Piper's cheekbone. "Give me one more."

Slowly, the laughter leaves Piper's eyes, her smile easing into something more serious. "Just...you know me. I think you're maybe the only person who does. Who I let." Piper shrugs a little, almost shy. "I think that matters."

"I like that I know you." Alex's eyes track to Piper's lips, her tongue slipping unconsciously across her own, but she doesn't lean forward yet. "Want to know something stupid?"

"What?"

"My mom's always thought we'd be a thing."

For some reason, that makes Piper even happier. "Really?"

"Really."

"What did you say?"

Alex arches an eyebrow. "That you're straight."

Piper tugs her bottom lip between her teeth, and looks away, heat rising to her cheeks. "I...don't know what I am. But I know I...liked kissing you." She lifts her eyes to meet Alex's. "Is that okay?"

"I can deal with that." Then Alex smirks. "Although you do have a boyfriend."

"He's not my boyfriend," Piper parrots, mocking the same tone Alex used earlier. "Especially not after I punched him."

"You were defending my honor. Sort of." Alex smiles without opening her mouth, lips pursed, and _fuck_, how has Piper not spent the past eight years distracted by her damn lips?

Alex seems to notice the object of Piper's focus, and her eyes gleam smugly right before she leans in, catches Piper's lower lip lightly with her teeth and then kisses her. Slower than before, like she wants to take her time, get the lay of the land.

They keep that up until the smell of burning eggs fills the kitchen.

* * *

"Do we have to talk about this?"

"_Yes_."

"It wasn't a big deal."

"It looked like a big deal."

"Fine, it was just...run of the mill, self-destructive shit."

"Run of the mill? _Really?" _

"I'm not proud of myself, okay? But most of the time, I was fine. It just got a little...out of control the past few weeks."

...

...

"And that's it?"

"C'mon, Pipes, are you really gonna make me say why?"

"Yes."

"It was...always right there, you know? The option to just...check out. School's always seemed like a waste of my time. The drugs were always...well, I always knew I could get them, if I wanted. It's not like I never thought about it before, Piper. What else am I supposed to be doing with my life? My mom works her ass off and barely has time for anything else. And it's not like I'm on track to do anything bigger...I'm not a person who gets to have grand plans. So, yeah, it's always just been tempting to just say, y'know, _fuck it_."

"So why now?"

"Fuck, Pipes, I just...all I had was you, okay? You and my mom, but it's not like she's home much. You were the only people who cared that I didn't go off some edge."

"Your friends..."

"What, people to sit next to and smoke on the bleachers? Girls looking to prove how alternative they are by fucking me to piss off their parents? No offense."

"Hey!"

"_Joking_. But Pipes...you were suddenly just _gone_. And I was really fucking lonely. And sick of being at school and waiting for you to come find me and apologize. And then when that never happened, I was tired of thinking about you finally figuring out you were too good for me."

"Alex..."

"Oh, hey, fuck, come on...don't do that. Don't cry on me, Pipes, you _made_ me tell you."

"I'm just really, really sorry."

"Piper, if you're going to force us to have these moments, we need to issue an apology embargo. Okay? I was a shitty friend, too. We both suck."

...

"C'mere..."

"_I_ have plans, okay? Plans that require _you_. So shut up about going off an edge, or, or saying _fuck it, _or anything else."

"I like when you get all bossy."

"_Alex_."

* * *

When Diane finds out, she gives them an _oh-imagine-that_ sort of smirk that looks uncannily like Alex, and makes a joke about them keeping the bedroom door open from now on. Later she gives Piper a tight hug and whispers a thank you, saying, "I knew I could still call you." That's the closest they come to mentioning Piper's recent absence from Alex's life.

Diane doesn't seem fazed by Alex and Piper's sudden reconciliation, or even their sudden escalation from best friends to girlfriends (which is undeniably what they are, even though it takes a month and a half before Alex uses the word).

What's stranger is how unfazed Piper is by it. She and Alex have been friends for almost half their lives, spent more time with each other than almost anyone else. It should be awkward, tentative, but instead they fall into it like it's the most natural thing in the world. Like this is what they should have been doing all along, and they'd been fighting something inevitable.

They rebuild their days around each other. Piper picks Alex up from school every morning, and Alex waits by her car every afternoon until Piper's out of whatever club meeting she has after school. Fired from the grocery store, Alex starts working at a Sonic, and Piper hangs around during the slow hours, leaning on the counter and flirting like an idiot while Alex gives her free slushies. There are times when it feels like middle school all over again, back when the two of them didn't need anyone else.

(And of course, there are times when it feels wonderfully _adult._)

* * *

"We can start staying at your place on Fridays. That'd double up our weekends."

"Yeah, right."

"Why not? I've spent the night at your house like two hundred times."

"Yeah, but now my parents would never - oh. _Oh_."

"And they say you're the smart one."

"I never even thought about that."

"The perk of the closeted teen lesbian."

"Not a lesbian."

"Whatever. Your perk is sleepovers with no suspicion."

"I like it."

"Good. Your bed's bigger."

"Oh, suddenly you don't like being close, Miss _come be my little spoon_?"

"Using my adorable banter against me. I see how it is."

"Does it bother you?"

"Yeah, Pipes, it wounds me to my core. I bant for _you_."

"No, not that. The whole, um. Closeted thing."

"No. I've met your parents. I wouldn't want them to know _I'm_ gay. Much less you."

"What about at school?"

"I told you it's fine. Much as I'd love to have a repeat in the lighting booth - "

"Shut up."

" - kids talk to their parents, their parents talk to yours. Vicious fucking cycle. I get it."

"But?"

"But what?"

"You've got a look."

"I understand why you wanna keep it a secret. I really do, Pipes. It's just...it makes it easier for you to walk away."

"Oh my God, Al, would you stop it with that? I'm not going anywhere."

"Except to some fancy ass college out of state."

"What? That's over a year away. Why are you even thinking about that?"

"Oh, like you aren't thinking about it."

"Actually, I can honestly say I've never thought about college less."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yep."

"I'm a very bad influence."

"Shit. I hate proving my parents right."

* * *

After eight years of friendship, Piper thought she had nothing new to learn about Alex Vause. But she is making new discoveries every day.

Alex smiles into kisses. She tastes like cigarettes and sugar. There's a tattoo on her left shoulder that she got a couple weeks after their fight (Piper's bummed about that until Alex promises to bring her for the next one). She has a thing about touching Piper's hair.

And after only a few days of Alex being back at school, Piper can see why she has a history of getting caught in lighting booths and custodial closets.

She's not sure if Alex has always been like this, and she was just willfully not seeing it, or if some switch flipped the first time they kissed, but holy _shit_.

Alex is pure seduction. They'll be sitting in the cafeteria, or passing in the hall, and all it takes is one little thing to drive Piper crazy. A raised eyebrow. A lip bite. Sometimes just a _look_, Alex's eyes narrow and smug and practically shooting sparks.

She's going to school every day again, but Alex still nips out of class on a whim, and spends most of her daily study hall smoking on the bleachers. One day Piper's sitting in AP English, listening to her teacher go point by point over a sample AP test essay, when Alex walks by the narrow glass rectangle on the classroom door.

Alex catches Piper's eye, her lips pressed together and curled in a slight smirk, and winks. Then she walks on.

_Jesus_.

Piper shoots her hand in the air and asks to see the nurse.

When she goes out in the hallway, Alex is ten feet down the hall, waiting. She starts walking as soon as Piper appears, not looking back, and Piper follows her from a distance, every nerve ending in her skin singing in anticipation, until Alex walks into the women's locker room as if she has every reason to be there.

Alex is as gleeful about assisting in Piper's first ever instance of skipping class as anything else, calling her _truant_ all day and looking ridiculously pleased with herself.

After that, she starts setting herself challenges.

Like the morning Piper picks her up for school, their new routine, and Alex refuses to so much as touch her. She doesn't kiss her good morning, doesn't play with her hair while Piper drives. She's smiling normally enough, but Piper's still racking her brain for what could be wrong until they get to the school parking lot and, testing, Piper reaches for her and Alex smoothly ducks away, badly biting back a grin, and Piper realizes she has some sort of plan.

With an eye roll and a dramatic sigh, Piper starts to turn the car off, but Alex says innocently, "Hold on, I wanna hear the rest of this song."

It's one of Piper's own tapes, and Alex doesn't even like Fiona Apple, but Piper knows better than to call bullshit. So they sit in the parking lot while students mill around and head inside the school. Piper's watching Alex. Alex is watching the clock.

With five minutes before the first bell, the parking lot's mostly empty, and Piper finally turns off the car and grabs her backpack from the back seat. "I gotta go or I'll be late."

Alex nods, then abruptly grabs the front of Piper's jacket and tugs her across the console, sweeping her tongue into Piper's mouth, filling it up. It's a powerhouse kiss, and Alex knows it, but she pulls back too quickly, and before Piper can even catch her breath, Alex slides her hand high up Piper's leg, pressing her fingers to the juncture of Piper's thighs, rubbing through the tight fabric of her jeans.

Piper lets out a whine that may or may not hold the syllable's of Alex's name.

Alex grins, leaning her free elbow on the console and propping her chin in her palm, smiling up at Piper through narrow, hazy eyes. Wicked, in the right light. Her fingers increase their pace and pressure, but it's teasing, pulling Piper in view of an edge but never once letting her lean over.

Dimly, Piper thinks she has to get out before she hits a point of no return, before Alex actually goes in for direct contact, and she mumbles a half-hearted protest, "Gotta...class," but doesn't back it up with any attempt to move away. Alex leans over, rounding her mouth at the base of Piper's jaw.

Alex eases her hand up, expertly flicking the button of Piper's jeans and sliding her hand under the waistband. Piper makes a stuck, squeaking sound, almost not wanting to give her the satisfaction. Alex spreads her wide, and she sends a single finger circling her clit, frustratingly languid. Piper arches against into her hand, when suddenly Alex leans forward and gives her a quick, perfunctory peck on the cheek and withdraws her hand.

"Two minute warning bell just rang," Alex informs her mildly. "I may hang out in here for first period...but you can probably still make it."

Piper closes her eyes, drawing shallow, quivering breaths, then cuts her eyes at Alex.

She has AP Chemistry first period. And a test in three days.

"Asshole," she clenches out in a hoarse voice before reaching out and seizing Alex's wrist, returning her hand to where it was. Alex's whole face lights up with her triumph.

* * *

"How long did you know?"

"Oh my god, _ego_."

"No, come on, I seriously want to know."

"You just want to hear about the teenage lesbian pining after her purportedly straight best friend. A tale as old as time."

"Hey, if anything, I'm an inversion of the trope. _I_ made the first move."

"Mmm-hmmm. And were you pining?"

"Subconsciously. Probably."

"Definitely. I remember sophomore year when you stormed my house to yell about Liz Moony."

"I still don't like her. You know she was aggressively unhelpful when I was looking for you that time."

"That's because she barely knows me."

"Classy."

"You'd prefer I stayed friends with all my exes?"

"I thought they weren't exes?"

"They aren't my ex-_girlfriends_. Ex-conquests? Sure."

"Ugh, okay, stop talking."

"Hey. You remember what I said to you that day?"

"Which day?"

"When I got suspended and you were having a tantrum over Liz Moony."

"What did you say?"

"I said that we'd never been the kind of friends who talked about dating and sex - "

"Because _you_ threw a tantrum at _me _when I kissed Cody Lionel. And we were _twelve_. So you've been pining longer - "

"_Ego_. That's not what I meant."

"Fine. What?"

"I said that even though I didn't tell you about every random hook up I have, I'd tell you when there was someone that mattered."

"Yeah..."

"Well. I'm telling you."

...

...

"You can be surprisingly cheesy. It would ruin your reputation if it got out."

"I'll get a couple more tattoos to even things up."

"Al?"

"Mmm?"

"I'm telling you, too."

* * *

The summer before their senior year of high school passes in a sepia toned haze of rock music and sweltering sunshine and Alex's sinfully short cutoffs.

They do shots of tequila, straight from the bottle, and have sex on Alex's apartment roof. They wait until Piper's parents are asleep and night swim in the pool, discarding swim suits by the side (Cal leads a group of his buddies outside once, but Piper shrieks at him so they don't get past the porch). They buy milkshakes and drive aimlessly in Piper's car for hours, Alex feeding in mixtapes and smoking out the open window, until they find a secluded road to pull the car over and crawl into the backseat.

They go to Friendly's and eat with Alex's mom on her breaks. Piper takes books to Sonic and sits on the tables outside, reading and eye fucking Alex every time she walks by. Piper works as a counselor at a summer camp for two weeks and she's practically bursting out of her skin by the end of it - drives straight to Alex's when she gets back and doesn't leave her apartment for twenty-four hours.

At seventeen, Piper and Alex are in love. Piper and Alex are happy.

There are moments where it feels like no one else of relevance exists in the world. They stay up most nights like it will double the time they get to live in this summer, and then end up sleeping until noon anyway.

Piper's SAT scores arrive. They're good, but her father wants her to take it one more time before college applications. She doesn't tell Alex. Just like she doesn't mention the college brochures that start coming in the mail.

* * *

When the last first day of high school rolls around in September, Piper wishes she could thread her fingers through Alex's, or kiss her at their lockers. There's no real reason not to; they spend all their time together, and there's a general consensus among Piper's old crowd that they're probably together.

But some part of Piper is still a coward. She's cut off most people she had to pretend in front of, but she can't cut off her family. She's not quite ready to blow holes in her parents image of her.

And it's not just that Alex is a girl. It's that she's _Alex_.

They fight sometimes, snippy little arguments about Alex going to class or not, or Piper saying something inadvertently judgmental or patronizing. They're quick fights, and usually end in them either laughing or making out, unable to keep up the serious charade for too long, but they happen increasingly often. Neither of them say it out loud, but they both know what's coming.

Piper soaks up that first semester of senior year, more desperately than she'd felt during that summer. She soaks up sneaking into locker rooms or custodial closets between classes, soaks up Alex's completely played out joke about getting her into the lighting booth someday. She revels in those daily drives to and from school, in draping herself over Alex on the couch while she does reading for AP Lit, in the times Alex shows up for her tennis matches and leans, smirking, against the fence in her leather jacket, catching Piper's eye and whispering, "Kick her fuckin ass, babe," every time Piper has to chase a ball to her end of the fence.

Piper never mentions the application essays she's writing, the forms she's filling out. She goes out of town a few weekends to visit campuses, but Alex doesn't ask questions when she gets back. It's easier that way.

But January brings the acceptance letters.

She hears back from second and third choice schools first, and doesn't tell Alex about it.

But Alex goes home with her after school the day the envelope from Smith arrives.

It's big and bulky, the sort of envelope that contains a _Congratulations!_ and a packet full of registration information.

Piper's smile is immediate and huge; for a second, she isn't thinking even of Alex, standing right behind her.

She worked damn hard for this. And in the end it turns out she wants it.

"Pipes, hey. That's awesome. You totally deserve it." The words are too formal, too practiced, and then Alex hugs her. When they pull back, she's smiling, but that _look_ is trapped behind her eyes. The look from that day on the bleachers, their biggest fight, the one Piper thinks about every time she thinks about leaving.

* * *

Piper learns the words to to talk about it, and they patch together some sort of plan, born from necessity.

_Only a few hours drive. _

_I'll come home some weekends, and your mom already said you can borrow the car sometimes..._

_I have to live in the dorms for a year, maybe two, while my parents are paying. But I'm gonna get a job there, part time, and save up._

_You work for a year, and I work for a year...by sophomore year we'll have an apartment off campus. _

_And we'll see each other all the time even before then. _

Alex nods and nods and tries to laugh and say she's not worried. But her smiles are stiff, jokes forced, and she goes quiet a lot more often now.

Piper runs out of assurances and explanations, because she knows it isn't just the distance: it's the very fact of college, that Piper will be constructing a life that doesn't include Alex. A life Alex isn't being offered.

It's taken Piper so long to understand Alex's insecurities; it's hard to remember she has them. Alex has always seemed so strong to her, even as a kid talking back to Jessica Wedge. It's been years and years since Alex was outwardly bothered by what she doesn't have. Because Alex Vause has always been _cool_. Piper remembers being twelve years old and hoping Alex's cool would rub off on her, hoping that her easy, daughter-of-a-rock-star confidence could be learned.

But then, during one of their countless conversations that came in the days after Piper kissed Alex and shook up the world, she'd mentioned Piper being _too good _for her.

Piper literally couldn't fathom that line of thinking, but Alex clearly had, and Piper's thinking about it a lot these days, but she doesn't know how to fix it.

* * *

"You remember my first day of school?"

"Oh, God, _don't_."

"I'm not trying to give you a crisis of conscious, dumbass. I'm trying to be nostalgic."

"What's there to be nostalgic about? I didn't talk to you."

"No, but you stared a lot."

"I was feeling guilty!"

"Nah, you were just staring. I think you _knew_, even back then. You knew what you felt, Pipes."

"Uh, if you noticed me staring it's because you were paying close attention to _me_."

"Shit. No wonder you're going to college."

...

"Did I kill the mood?"

"No. Which side does the tassel go on?"

"Does it matter?"

"_Yes_. There's a specific way to do it, symbolically, but I can't remember."

"You better figure it the fuck out Pipes. Otherwise they revoke your diploma."

"I hate you."

"No, you don't."

"No. I don't."

* * *

There's something desperate to that last summer, nothing like the careless, infinite bliss of last year. Time rushes by far too quickly, careening toward the moment that everything changes.

On the fourth of July they crawl up on Alex's roof to watch distant fireworks and burn a box of gold sparklers Alex bought at a roadside stand. They're lying on a blanket, Piper's head on Alex's stomach, her arm stretched above them, holding a thin metal rod shooting sparks. One by one, they watch them burn out. When the box is empty, all the beauty of the night gone, they split a bottle of wine and part of another, drinking to the point of drunkenness, and the sex is frenzied and panicked.

They wake up with hangovers the next morning in Alex's tiny twin bed, and Diane laughs at them before making coffee.

Alex waits until her mom leaves for work before she hands Piper an envelope.

"I know it's only a week before you have to leave," she says quietly as Piper opens it up. "But...will you come with me?"

Piper's staring down at two tickets to a Death Maiden concert, three weeks away, and her instinct is a lurch of worry before she even knows why. "Does your mom know?"

"No. He came to a couple of closer cities on other tours, like back when I was a kid. And she'd never take me. So I don't know." Alex fiddles nervously with her glasses. "I figure I'll just go myself this first time. Tell her after."

Piper nods absently, thinking how unusual it is for Alex to keep something from Diane. She forgets Alex is technically still waiting for an answer, until she prompts urgently, "So will you?"

"God, sorry, yeah, of course, Al. You know I'll come."

Alex breaks into a relieved grin. "Great!" Then, too casual, "It'll be kind of cool, right? Getting to see his band?"

"Yeah. Really cool." Leaning back against Alex on the couch, Piper's sure she doesn't sound sincere, which Alex can usually bust her on, but anything having to do with her father has always been a cause for faulty wiring on Alex's bullshit detector.

And Piper suddenly feels very, very scared for her.

* * *

The concert date looms a week before Piper moves away to school, which is probably a blessing as it distracts their nerves.

Hours before they have to leave, Piper stretches out on Alex's bed watching her silently agonize over what to wear.

"No white pleather jacket?" she teases lightly after awhile.

Alex throws her a look. "I tell you way too much shit."

It's a three hour drive, and Alex plays tapes of the band and doesn't talk much, just plays absently with Piper's hand in the center console and occasionally smokes out the window, but Piper can feel the anxious anticipation radiating off her.

Piper, though, feels like her stomach is full of stones. Alex is nervous, but she's not nervous about _him_, about what he'll be like, so Piper's carrying all that fear for her.

There's never been room for practicality or realism when it comes to this. Alex has no neutral button about her father, no objectivity and while it's a little heartbreaking, it's been ultimately harmless. But now they're driving toward a real person instead of the abstract idea of a rock god, and Piper's gnawing the inside of her cheek and wondering if it's time to say something to tamper expectations. Just speak the possibility out loud, start a sentence with _You know even if he's not what you're expecting..._

But Piper's cowardice keeps a tight hold on the words, no matter how gentle and theoretical they are. She can't be the one to hand Alex doubt.

* * *

They get to the venue early enough to work their way close to the stage, and as soon as they're there Alex takes Piper's hand in a death grip and doesn't let go.

There's an opening band, and Piper can feel Alex shaking, so she moves behind her, wrapping arms around her waist and leaning up to kiss the back of Alex's neck. The music is crashing, jangling rock that sounds like destruction, but Piper starts moving her body against Alex's, and slowly Piper can feel some of the tension drain from her muscles. By the end of the set Alex is moving against her, reaching her hands back and trailing them up Piper's hips, craning her neck back to tease kisses. For a little while, it could be any other concert.

But as soon as the opener is over Alex goes still again, staring intently at the stage as roadies switch out instruments, like she's afraid she'll miss the exact moment her father appears if she glances away. Piper takes her hand again, squeezing gently.

And then he's there, this aging musician sitting at a drum set, and when Alex whispers, "Look!" she sounds like an excited little girl. Piper turns to watch Alex, and instantly her heart catches in her chest; Alex's smile is awed and full of light. She's staring at the stage like it holds the meaning of life.

Piper drags her eyes away to land on Lee Burley, drumming out an angry percussion that sends her lungs rattling against her ribcage. Tries to think of this tattooed man in a bandanna and ripped T-shirt as Alex's _dad_.

Alex is watching him like he's some sort of deity, and Piper's no better, because she closes her eyes and wings him a prayer.

_Please be worth a damn. Please be some fraction of what she wants from you._

"It's amazing, isn't it?" Alex yells, right against Piper's ear. Piper opens her eyes to look at her, and it's that _look_ she gets, all eager anticipation and a fraction of anxiety, like what Piper thinks really, really matters. All of a sudden they're nine years old listening to cassettes in Alex's bedroom, Alex nervously watching Piper for approval.

Piper smiles and nods, briefly trailing her knuckles across Alex's jaw.

_Please just fucking be nice to her._

* * *

"You want me to go with you?"

"Um. No. Not yet. I'll go back and meet him by myself and then come get you?"

"Yeah, sure whatever you want." Piper forces a smile, torn between disappointment, worry, and small, selfish relief. "Take your time, okay? I'll just hang out in the car."

"Thanks." Alex nods, like it's all been decided, but she doesn't move.

"Hey..." Piper brings Alex's hand to her lips, kissing the knuckles. "It's gonna be okay."

This is the moment to say something. To add _no matter what he says. _But she doesn't.

* * *

Soon, way too soon, she spots Alex striding across the parking toward the car.

Piper jumps out of the driver's side to meet her, hoping against all her instincts that Alex is just coming to bring her inside, that she's about to be introduced to her girlfriend's rocker dad. But Alex, her expression determinedly calm, just shakes her head and goes for the passenger door, "We can go."

Slowly, Piper lowers herself back into the car, throat constricting painfully. She's not sure what to do, whether to push Alex into talking or leave her alone. Finally, she decides it'd be weird to say nothing. Soft, understanding, she asks, "Al, what happened?"

Alex is slunk low in the seat, her fists shoved into her jacket pockets, like she's trying to make herself as small as possible. Her face is carefully blank. "He's just about what you'd expect from a depressing fucking has-ben. Don't think there's much fatherly wisdom to glean. Would you just fucking drive?"

Obediently, Piper cranks the car. Immediately, Death Maiden blasts to life on the tape deck, and Alex reaches out and hits the eject button almost viciously. Piper doesn't say anything as Alex unravels the tape from the cassette's reel, and when they pull out of the parking lot, she rolls down the window and slings the ruined tape into the street.

They drive in total silence for ten minutes, the quiet punctured only by the occasional sharp, angry intake of breath from Alex.

Eventually, Piper ventures hesitantly, "Wanna tell me what happened?"

"No, I fucking want you to drive me home."

"Al, it's okay..."

"No, it's _not_!" She bursts out, sounding so furious. "It's not okay, Piper, I was an _idiot._ Did you know? Have you always known how_completely_ _fucking_ _stupid_ I sound talking about him?"

"Of course not! Alex, c'mon, what happened? What did he do?"

"He...he..." Alex's face twists into a childlike mask of devastation, and she lets out a short, wet laugh. "He said I have a _serious_ _rack_ _on_ _me_."

"_What_?"

Alex shakes her head hard, opens her mouth to continue, and then bursts into tears.

"Alex!" Piper cries out before she can stop herself. She says it as if Alex had just taken a fall, or screamed in pain. This is just as startling.

She's never seen Alex cry, and has seen her on the brink of tears only twice: once on her first day of school, back if fourth grade, and once after their fight junior year.

But now Alex has her face in her hands, making gasping, keening sounds. Alex cries angrily, like her body is betraying her.

Piper's whole body feels hollow, and she's light headed with panic. She pulls the car into an empty Chili's parking lot and pulls the key out of the ignition. When she realizes they've stopped, Alex manages to choke out, "Piper, _don't_, just drive, please just fucking drive..."

But Piper ignores her. She gets out the car and circles it to the passenger side, opens the door, and awkwardly ducks in to put her arms around Alex, who, in spite of her protests, wilts against Piper immediately.

She goes quiet soon; Piper wouldn't think she was still crying if she couldn't feel the tears on her neck, the way Alex's whole body shudders. Fighting back her own tears, triggered as naturally as any reflex, Piper presses her lips against Alex's hair and holds on tightly.

After awhile, Piper whispers, "Who you are has nothing to do with him, okay? It never has. You don't need it."

She's not sure if it's the right thing to say, but Alex's grip tightens on her, and she shifts slightly like she's trying to get even closer. Then, in a small, thick voice, Alex mumbles against Piper's collarbone, "Please don't leave."

Piper's chest knots up; she knows Alex would never say this at any other moment, would never drop the pretense of not being worried about Piper moving away. She kisses the side of Alex's head and says, "I'm right here," even though they both know that's not what she meant.

* * *

They go back to the apartment and Piper watches while Alex unravels every Death Maiden tape and rips down every poster they're on. Piper lets her rage until Alex starts in on other tapes.

"Hey, whoa...what are you doing? Don't take it out on _all_ music ever."

Alex's eyes are red and swollen and her hands keep curling automatically into fists. "Why the hell not? I'm pretty sure I started listening to all this because I like...thought it would impress him, or some shit. So fucking stupid."

"Your mom was probably playing you those records before you had any clue what a 'rock band' was. Your father doesn't own an entire era of music." Piper watches Alex, and when she doesn't seem inclined to argue, shoots her a gentle, teasing smile, "Besides. To be honest, Death Maiden was never even close to my favorite."

That coaxes an exhausted smile from Alex. "I kind of figured. It's not exactly your thing."

"No, it's not." Piper sorts through the pile until she finds a cassette labeled "Pipes #5" in Alex's scrawled handwriting. She pops it into the tape deck and presses play.

_Whenever I'm alone with you, you make me feel like I am home again_.

"You and The Cure," Alex says, shaking her head a little, but she's smiling. She lies back on the bed, nodding for Piper to join her.

Piper crawls the length of the mattress and leans over Alex, kissing her deeply, but then rolls to the side and rests her head on Alex's chest. They lie there tangled together, listening.

* * *

Her car is packed up, and she says her goodbyes to her parents and grandmother and Cal in the driveway, but instead of driving straight to the interstate she goes to Alex's.

She's waiting outside, on the metal steps going up to the apartment building, but she stands up and runs to her apartment door when Piper pulls in. By the time she's out of the car, Diane is following Alex down the stairs.

Diane hugs Piper long and hard. "You be good, kiddo. Have fun, but not so much fun you won't come back and see us, yeah?" She winks, and Piper looks at Alex when she says she won't. She feels like she needs to promise that about a hundred more times.

She heads inside, patting her daughter sympathetically on the shoulder as she goes, leaving the two of them alone.

For a moment they're quiet, not sure how to begin this. Then Alex hands Piper a thick stack of tapes. "I timed it out..this is the exact length of your drive. And it took for fucking ever, so you better listen in order. I even put in some of that chick music you love so much."

"I know that was hard for you."

Quiet again. Piper suddenly finds this whole thing stupid; Alex can work minimum wage jobs from Farhampton just as easily, and for a second Piper wants to ask her to throw some stuff in the car and come with her.

But she can't move Alex into a dorm room with her. And anyway, it isn't the plan. Work for a year. Save up. Off campus apartment.

"Fall break's in like a month and a half," Piper says, in lieu of anything better. "But I may drive back in a few weeks for Labor Day."

"Piper." That smile. The _that's so Piper_ smile, a little weaker than usual. "It's okay. Really." She hesitates, "I didn't tell you this, but...that guy I met at my - at the concert called. He's talking about maybe getting me a job."

"Oh yeah? Doing what?"

"I don't know exactly, but...he seemed to have money. It's all about the apartment, right?" Alex grins, but there's something strange about the way she's not making eye contact.

"But it doesn't have anything to do with, y'know...your dad."

"Oh, no fucking way. Nothing like that."

Piper wants to ask more questions, but she's worried Alex only brought this up to distract from what's going on. And she really does have to go. "Well, good. Keep me posted." She sets the tapes down on the dashboard, then faces Alex. "I'll call you when I get there."

"I know."

"And all the time."

"I know."

"And it'll just be a few weeks - "

"Pipes, I _know, _okay?" Alex is laughing at her. She pushes her glasses up on her head. "Just kiss me."

She does.

When they pull away, Alex isn't laughing anymore. Piper's trying not to cry.

"Don't go running back to the lighting booth with some other girl."

"There goes my evening plans."

"Dick."

"Gross."

"Kiss me again."

"Needy..."

...

...

"I love you."

"Yes, I know."

"_Asshole_."

"I love you, too. C'mere."

...

...

...

"Okay, this is fucking depressing. You gotta go, Pipes."

"_Fuck_."

"I don't know if we have time..."

"_Alex_. Are you capable of being serious?"

"Piper, I'm trying really hard to keep it together, okay? Let me have my banter and innuendo."

"I'm sorry."

Alex pulls her close, nudging her nose slightly against Piper's, then brushes their lips together, maybe the gentlest Piper's ever been kissed. "I really do love you," she whispers, the words falling against Piper's skin. Alex straightens up, pulls her glasses back down, and says softly, "Now go."

Piper nods, too tight throated to speak, and she grabs her stack of mixtapes and gets into the driver's side of her car.

This is the part she's been dreading even more than the rest of it: pulling away from Alex and seeing the look on her face as she shrinks with the distance.

She keeps her eyes locked on Alex through the windshield. She's wearing a The Cure shirt, and Piper wonders if that was on purpose. She throws the car into reverse and pulls out of the parking space, and finally drives away from Alex's apartment.

Piper's vision is blurry and probably dangerous for driving, but she's not sure she has the strength to walk away again. So she just blinks hard and keeps driving, heading toward the life she is expected to live, but with no intention of letting Alex go.

She's a mile away before she remembers the tapes. They all have numbers written on the label, so Piper pushes #1 into the tape deck.

It's the same song they were listening to in Alex's bedroom last week, but she'd started it in the middle of the chorus.

_However far away, I will always love you._

Piper smiles.

**End**

* * *

_A/N: _So. I hope that was somewhat satisfying for everyone...I could honestly write a Young Adult novel length fic about the high school stuff alone, but I really don't have time to keep up with ongoing multi-chapters right now. This was always intended to be a kind of vignette style, through the years thing, so I hope no one feels shafted by what we got of their relationship. Thanks so much for reading, and for the feedback back so far! Would love to hear what you guys think!


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